The magic of books

THE BOOKSELLERS, the film by Amer­i­can doc­u­men­tary film direc­tor D. W. Young, awak­ens two dreams in the pan­dem­ic-plagued Cen­tral Euro­pean author: on the one hand, to trav­el to New York again – and, on the oth­er hand, to spend hours brows­ing through book­stores and sec­ond-hand book­shops. The book­stores were allowed to be open most of the time, at least here in Berlin, but a quick deci­sion, buy and dis­ap­pear again was desired. How­ev­er, it was pre­ferred to buy from Jeff Bezos right away.

THE BOOKSELLERS immers­es in the New York book world and observes book­sellers, book col­lec­tors, book buy­ers, and book auc­tion­eers. And the fact that the female rep­re­sen­ta­tives have to be explic­it­ly men­tioned here is also one of the themes of the film: in the past, the book busi­ness was pure­ly a men’s busi­ness, until well into the sec­ond half of the 20^th cen­tu­ry. Women first had to fight for their rights.

The film is not only about a chang­ing scene, it is also about a pos­si­bly dying scene, and sur­pris­ing­ly in two ways: On the one hand, dig­i­ti­za­tion ensures the grad­ual decline in the mean­ing of the word and image print­ed between two book cov­ers. On the oth­er hand, the Inter­net also ensures that every rare, leg­endary, sought-after copy of a book is avail­able almost direct­ly and almost imme­di­ate­ly via the Inter­net. The hunt, the year-long search that played a deci­sive role in the impor­tance of this occu­pa­tion, has degen­er­at­ed into a mere query of a few Inter­net pages. „It’s not the kill. It’s the thrill of the chase. ”

And what still excites you about this film is the spe­cial­ty, the eccen­tric­i­ty, the whim­si­cal­i­ty, the pas­sion, the enthu­si­asm of all the pro­tag­o­nists. And we’re also hap­py to meet Fran Lebowitz again, who just appeared as a New York expert in Mar­tin Scorsese’s enchant­i­ng inter­view film “Pre­tend It’s a City”, and who appears here as a book expert.

“In the 1950s there were 368 book­stores in New York City,” reports one of the book­sellers. Today there are 79. But well, record stores still exist – and cin­e­mas, I lean far out of the win­dow now – will be around for a long time.

Run­ning time: 99 min.

Pro­duc­tion year: 2020

Coun­try of pro­duc­tion: USA

Direct­ed by D. W. Young

Pro­duc­ers: Judith Mizrachy, Dan Wech­sler

Co-Pro­duc­er: Debra Mcclutchy

Pro­duc­tion: Black­let­ter Films

With Park­er Posey, Fran Lebowitz, Gay Talese and many more.

Cam­era: Peter Bolte

Music: David Ull­mann

Exec­u­tive Pro­duc­er: Park­er Posey

Dis­trib­u­tor: mind­jazz pic­tures

Avail­able on Ama­zon Prime.