Dennis Hollingsworth

Bill Cunningham

Stephanie found this movie online this morning and we discovered that we could see it at a matinee at Pasadena's Laemmle theater if we banged out of the house to catch the movie in 30 minutes flat. We felt so lucky to see it, and so we recommend it to you.

Touching.

Inspiring.

The "Bill" in question is 80+ New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham. For decades, this Schwinn-riding cultural anthropologist has been obsessively and inventively chronicling fashion trends and high society charity soir?es for the Times Style section in his columns "On the Street" and "Evening Hours." Documenting uptown fixtures (Wintour, Tom Wolfe, Brooke Astor, David Rockefeller?who all appear in the film out of their love for Bill), downtown eccentrics and everyone in between, Cunningham's enormous body of work is more reliable than any catwalk as an expression of time, place and individual flair. In turn, Bill Cunningham New York is a delicate, funny and often poignant portrait of a dedicated artist whose only wealth is his own humanity and unassuming grace.