Press

NEW YORK TIMES
January 19, 2006

'Decades Later, Haunted by the Loss of a Little Brother'

"Phantom Limb" can only be called - deep breath - an art film. A dirgelike documentary about the death of a child, the program appears on Cinemax tonight, part of that channel's "Reel Life" series. The film is an impressionistic, anti-verité project, which suits the melancholy material; much of this meditation on grief is rendered soundlessly, using archival images, intertitles and the lonesome music of Arvo Pärt. Art on television - in small doses, it's surprising how easy it goes down.
-Virginia Hefferman

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THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN
November 9, 2005

'Matters of Life and Death: Recent Films by Jay Rosenblatt'

Mixing the universally impersonal (newsreels, old educational movies) with the immediately personal (his own home movies), Jay Rosenblatt leaves you to close the gap, and you appreciate the delegation and trust.
-Ihsan Amanatullah

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THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
November 11, 2005

'Matters of Life and Death'

Jay Rosenblatt makes short, pointed, poetic films, and to see a collection of his work is to know he's a major artist. His specialness has no single source. He's a master at matching music and image, and the nature of his work, which usually involves discovering and using found footage, requires profound patience. Yet mostly, I suspect, what makes almost every Jay Rosenblatt film a full emotional experience is his empathy, his deep, unfeigned and unmistakable respect for life in its many forms.
- Mick LaSalle

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THE NEW YORK TIMES
(Sunday Arts and Leisure)
August 6, 2000

'Times When Less Is More Profound'

A one-week retrospective of Mr. Rosenblatt's classic works as well as his new ones, starting on Wednesday at Film Forum, will include ''Human Remains,'' ''The Smell of Burning Ants'' and ''King of the Jews.'' While hardly a household name, he has long been admired on the film-festival circuit and by other filmmakers. The Canadian director Atom Egoyan said, ''He's an exquisite artist who makes beautifully crafted miniatures.'' Mr. Egoyan, himself well known for such features as ''The Sweet Hereafter,'' particularly values the form Mr. Rosenblatt has chosen: ''Jay Rosenblatt isn't making 'calling card movies.' In the current climate of everyone wanting to make an indie feature, he's devoted himself to the very endangered form of the short film. He has stayed pure.''

What is most striking about his masterpiece, ''Human Remains,'' is his audacity in choosing to address atrocity entirely by omission. The audience journeys through archival film of Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Franco and Mussolini, guided only by a soundtrack of quotations and biographical data about their personal habits, all synthesized into an amusing but unlikely confessional.
-B. Ruby Rich

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