Sometimes, It Helps to Look at Another Human's Face

"Sam Green makes what he likes to call "live documentaries," movies that combine traditional nonfiction filmmaking with elements of live performance of both the musical and spoken-word kind. In the past, he's collaborated with the Kronos Quartet (2018's A Thousand Thoughts) and Yo La Tengo (2012's The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller), among others. At first glance, his latest, The Oldest Person in the World, which is premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, would seem more conventional in nature."

"Green has said that he intends to continue making versions of this movie for the rest of his life, charting the new titleholders for the world's oldest living person every few years with a new cinematic entry, à la Michael Apted's famous Seven Up! series - so even this project will have a certain "live" quality to it, with the filmmaker's own career serving as a kind of performance element across the years."

"But there's something else about The Oldest Person in the World that makes it feel like a living work of art. Green initially becomes interested in these supercentenarians because of his obsession with the Guinness Book of World Records (which he made a film about in 2014, called The Measure of All Things) and his 2015 discovery that the oldest living person at the time, Susannah Mushatt Jones, resided not too far from him in Brooklyn."

Sam Green makes live documentaries that combine nonfiction filmmaking with live musical and spoken-word performance. The Oldest Person in the World follows individuals who have been declared the world's oldest living person, whose tenure can last months or years. Green intends to revisit the subject periodically throughout his life, charting new titleholders in a series modeled on Michael Apted's Seven Up! project. Green's interest traces to an obsession with the Guinness Book of World Records and discovering Susannah Mushatt Jones nearby. During production his son Atlas is born and Green receives a cancer diagnosis, and the film becomes a record of aging and mortality.

Read at Vulture