The Magician (Ben Profane)
2019 · 5m · Germany
Directed by Fabian Korbinian Wolf
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, whimsical
A portrait of Ben Profane, a Munich-based stage magician with 25+ years of experience.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Five-minute portrait of a Munich stage magician where the crew donated their labor — endearing but tiny, and "not very musical, definitely not a vegetarian" is the kind of charm-bait that wears thin. Fine.
Errol Morris and the Tim's Vermeer school of obsessive-craftsman portraiture have established the form; a four-and-a-half-minute portrait of a Munich stage magician is modest within it. The crew's donated labor is touching context, not a substitute for the work.
Munich-based stage magician portrait, ~4:35 of joie-de-vivre direct address — the donated-crew detail is the load-bearing element, mirroring Profane's pure-performance ethic. Couldn't get past captcha; on paper this is a sweet, modest portrait film, nothing more or less.