SXSW Film Review: Wide Awake
It’s not that Alan Berliner (writer, director, editor, producer) can’t sleep.

His creative clock has him on the graveyard shift. When the sun goes down and the shadows of the day disappear into the cloak of the night, the world pauses for him to search, discover, find meaning in it all. It’s his time to capture the previous day’s cultural images and remix them into his library of meaning.
It’s his time to create.
Some would say that Berliner is obsessive compulsive. Sure, maybe by the definition of a pedigree expert needing to prescribe another individual’s place in the world a fitting label and a career extending dose of pharma.
I’d argue that he sees the world through his eyes, which isn’t as common of a feat as one might surmise. Berliner takes the time to categorize nearly every sound, image and video that he comes across, and the evening is his obvious extention of his rebuild process; creating new context from ideas and producing his vision for the screen.
Wide Awake is his meta-documentary, exploring all of his flaws and brilliance, as it relates to his health, childhood, wife and newborn son (an especially insightful and beautiful display of viewing life through the eyes of our children).
Alan, if you ever come across this post, you gotta go play with flickr. You’ll love it.
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