Next up at SummerDocs: ‘Listen to Me Marlon’

On Saturday, August 1, HIFF’s first-rate SummerDocs series, presented by TNT’s Public Morals, continues with the captivating and dreamy Listen To Me Marlon. Following the screening, series host Alec Baldwin will moderate a conversation with filmmaker Stevan Riley.

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A documentary that shatters the boundaries between filmmaker and subject, Listen To Me Marlon is part family photo album, part diary, part revelation. A confessional pastiche of Marlon Brando‘s most intimate thoughts and recollections, the film feels like a pathway into the legendary actor’s very soul, offering insights that could never be gleaned from even a deeply researched biography, an in-depth interview, or his iconic film roles. The result is wholly mesmerizing; you won’t want it to end.

Watch the trailer:

Listen To Me, Marlon

Saturday, August 1, 8:00 pm
Directed by Stevan Riley

Listen To Me Marlon is much less a factual recital of Brando’s acting career and personal life, than a creative odyssey into the mind and motivation of an enigma. Like an arch hypnotist Brando’s own voice leads the storytelling—there are no interviewees, no talking heads, just Marlon guiding us into the padlocked recesses of his own memory, and through the story of his life. In homage to the corkscrew personality of its subject, previously unheard audio tapes reveal witty and unexpected turns of Marlon’s thinking; dipping between light and dark, humour and self-psychoanalysis. The non-linear approach leaps and drifts back and forth in chronology to help illustrate memory’s haunting effect on the present. Visually the film conveys hypnotic states and quixotic departures as we lose ourselves in Brando’s spoken daydreams, playful asides and confiding whispers.

Following the screening, Alec Baldwin will host a conversation with filmmaker Stevan Riley (Fire in Babylon).  

Tickets on sale now.

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Beach-Magazine-logo-150Support for this screening of Listen to Me Marlon is graciously provided by Macquarie Group and Beach Magazine.


Program note: Alec Baldwin will also host the final SummerDocs screenings of this summer: Peace Officer on Friday, August 28.


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Candescent Films returns to sponsor the Audience Award for the 2015 SummerDocs series. Candescent Films supports documentaries that illuminate social issues. Join the conversation @CandescentFilms.


On August 25, SummerDocs presenting sponsor TNT will take viewers to the gritty streets and the bright, seductive lights of 1960s New York this summer with Public Morals, a powerful police drama from writer, director, executive producer and star Edward Burns (Saving Private RyanThe Brothers McMullen, TNT’s Mob City). Public Morals also stars Michael Rapaport (JustifiedPrison Break) and Elizabeth Masucci (The AmericansInside Amy Schumer).

Public Morals is produced in collaboration with Amblin Television and executive producers Steven SpielbergJustin Falvey and Darryl Frank, the team behind the network’s hit series Falling Skies. Also serving as executive producer is Aaron Lubin.