Berliner first achieved recognition with a group of innovative films made between 1975 and 1985, but it was his first hour-long experimental documentary, The Family Album that created a true buzz. In the film Berliner used a vast collection of anonymous 16mm home movies from more than 75 different families to create a universal portrait of the American family. Roger Ebert called it “the most intriguing film” of the 1987 Edinburgh International Film Festival. Next up was Intimate Stranger (1991) which explored family through the extraordinary life story of Berliner’s maternal grandfather, a Jewish man raised in Egypt, with a passion for Japan. The Washington Post wrote it was “so wholly original in both style and substance as to seem completely without precedent…a spectacular high wire feat by a master.” This was followed by Nobody’s Business which turned the camera on Berliner’s reclusive and reluctant father. Writing in Film Comment, critic Phillip Lopate said: “I know of no one working in personal films today who can do so well what Alan Berliner does: bring dramatically alive the intense agony and ambivalence and love within families.”
His feature-length films, which also include Letter to the Editor (2019), First Cousin Once Removed (2013), Wide Awake (2006) and The Sweetest Sound (2001) have been shown all over the world, and received awards and prizes at many major international film festivals. The New York Times has described Berliner's work as "powerful, compelling and bittersweet...full of juicy conflict and contradiction, innovative in their cinematic technique, unpredictable in their structures...Alan Berliner illustrates the power of fine art to transform life."
Over the years, Berliner’s films have become part of the core curriculum for documentary filmmaking and film history classes at universities internationally and are in the collections of many film societies, festivals, libraries, colleges, and museums. All of his films are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
In an interview with journalist Anne S. Lewis about his work and process, Berliner said, “If I had to choose some descriptive words, I’d say that all of my films and installations are highly edited constructions, trying to re-imagine and re-frame our relationships to things we often take for granted…Lots to think about, fun to interact with, playful but controlled – and/but also unpredictable, inspired, and each authentic in its very own way. And last but not least, labors of love, each and every one of them. Simple as that.”
BENITA, screening at this year’s Hamptons Doc Fest, is his most recent film.
