Siri Hustvedt - Dancing Around the Self

After her portraits of Nan Goldin and Emma Thompson, German filmmaker Sabine Lidl turns her camera on Siri Hustvedt, the celebrated American author of acclaimed novels such as What I Loved (2003) and The Blazing World (2014). Lidl takes us from Hustvedt’s childhood in quiet Minnesota to her arrival in bustling Manhattan, with just one suitcase and five boxes of books. There, she would build a life with the late Paul Auster, as life partners and each other’s most devoted first readers. Hustvedt speaks candidly about the questions, dreams and hunger for more that have continued to shape her writing. “If I could fill my head with the wisdom and art of the ages I would over time augment myself, volume by volume, into the giant I wanted to be,” Hustvedt declared as an aspiring author. Lidl succeeds brilliantly in bringing that literary giant down to human scale in a fitting portrait.