Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man, A Free Documentary on the Argentine Writer

He was Argenti­na’s favorite son, one of the great South Amer­i­can writ­ers of the last cen­tu­ry (along with Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez, Car­los Fuentes, and Mario Var­gas Llosa), and the win­ner of 46 nation­al and inter­na­tion­al lit­er­ary prizes. We’re talk­ing about Jorge Luis Borges, the mas­ter of the post­mod­ern short sto­ry. Borges was born in 1899, and to cel­e­brate his 100th birth­day (though he died in 1986), Philippe Molins direct­ed the doc­u­men­tary, Jorge Luis Borges: The Mir­ror Man. The film’s major strength (as one review­er put it) is that it’s a “bit of every­thing – part biog­ra­phy, part lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, part hero-wor­ship, part book read­ing, and part psy­chol­o­gy.” It runs 47 min­utes and includes a fair amount of archival footage. (You can watch it in a larg­er for­mat on Vimeo here.)

A big thanks goes to Mike for send­ing The Mir­ror Man our way. If you have your own great piece of cul­tur­al media to share with us and your fel­low OC read­ers, please feel free to send it along.