F for Fake (USA)

F for Fake (USA)
(90 min; 1977; English)
Director: Orson Welles
Written by Orson Welles, Oja Kodar

Orson Welles’s final completed film is a ground breaking blend of fact and fiction that dazzles audiences to this day. He began with footage shot by François Reichenbach for a documentary on professional art forger Elmyr de Hory, a Hungarian-born, Ibiza-based master of Picasso, Modigliani and Matisse replicas.

Welles soon discovered, however, that Hory’s would-be biographer, American ex-patriot Clifford Irving, was himself the forger responsible for the notorious fake Howard Hughes diaries. Welles incorporated new footage, with major contributions from his then-companion, Oja Kodar, into a dizzying, delightful “film essay.”