An Independent Portrait (2006)

Asked afterward what his biggest challenge was in making this film, Muniain replied, "It's an hour in a room." His solution is to sporadically cut away from said room to clips from Young's films, including hard-to-find works like Caught and even harder-to-find films like Alambrista! and Cortile Cascino. The result is a sort of nested doll effect as the myriad subjects and artists (Muniain, de la Concha, Young, Young's subjects) register in the master Portrait to varying degrees. It's no accident that close-ups of human faces figure heavily in some of the most moving films ever made: By cutting scenes from Young's films next to scenes of his portrait being painted, Muniain invites us to reflect on the impact that this man's life and work has had on his visage, on what shapes a face. That is, to my mind, an attempt to grapple with nothing less than the power of cinema.