Some documentaries reconstruct history from a distance. This one hands the microphone straight to Orson Welles, catching him field questions from a room that had just watched The Trial.
What is Filming 'The Trial' about?
The footage at the center of Filming 'The Trial' comes from a single afternoon in 1981, when Welles sat for a 90-minute question-and-answer session at the University of Southern California following a screening of his adaptation of Kafka. His longtime cinematographer, Gary Graver, filmed the exchange, planning to cut highlights into a longer piece built around the screening. That larger project never came together in Welles' lifetime, and the raw material sat unused until BBC journalist Leslie Megahy pulled selections from it for his 1982 Arena profile of the director. One exchange singled out here has a young audience member pressing Welles on whether he considers himself persecuted by the Establishment and by capitalism, a question Welles receives with visible amusement rather than agreement.
About the cast
There is no cast to speak of beyond Welles, who is simultaneously the subject and the only person on camera answering questions. The same person who directed The Trial spends this film on the other side of the exchange, explaining himself to a room full of strangers.
Context & significance
Graver later recalled the makeup of that USC crowd, noting that a number of people who went on to build real filmmaking careers were sitting in the audience that day, alongside working film critics including Joseph McBride and Todd McCarthy. That mix of future filmmakers and established critics gives the session a weight beyond an ordinary post-screening chat: a room full of people who understood exactly what they were watching, pressing one of American cinema's most guarded directors to explain himself in his own words.
Watching Filming 'The Trial' on Ktime
Filming 'The Trial' is free to read about on K-Time without an account, and streaming it only requires logging in — a paid subscription, nothing to compare or shop around for. The interface runs in Farsi as well as English, so Persian-speaking viewers researching Welles' catalogue can browse the whole page in their own language before they press play.