Letter to the Editor

WRITTEN, PRODUCED, DIRECTED AND EDITED BY ALAN BERLINER
85 MINUTES
2019

Composed entirely of photographs cut out from printed editions of The New York Times over the past 40 years, LETTER TO THE EDITOR is the personal musings of a news junkie, the culmination of his decades-long love affair with the printed newspaper, and an elegy for the death of the printed newspaper in the digital age.

In 1980, when he was 23 years old, filmmaker Alan Berliner began collecting photographs from the printed edition of the New York Times, amassing tens of thousands of images over the decades in a vast personal archive. Forty years later, at a time when the newspaper is in an existential battle to survive, Berliner employs his unique collage-like approach to an excavation of the newspaper, and what it means to him personally and politically.

With both solemn seriousness and a visual whimsy, the film explores the declining role (and impending disappearance) of the newspaper in the face of transformative advances in media and digital technology — a baby boomer's lament on the end of an era, on coping with change, on time passing, on growing old, and on staying informed and engaged during these challenging and uncertain times.