Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life | |
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Original film poster
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Directed by | Michael Paxton |
Produced by | Michael Paxton |
Written by | Michael Paxton |
Narrated by | Sharon Gless |
Music by | Jeff Britting |
Cinematography | Alik Sakharov |
Edited by | Christopher Earl Lauren A. Schaffer |
Distributed by | Strand Releasing |
Release date
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Running time
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145 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life is a 1996 American documentary film written, produced, and directed by Michael Paxton. Its focus is on novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, the author of the bestselling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, who promoted her philosophy of Objectivism through her books, articles, speeches, and media appearances.
Actress Sharon Gless narrates the story of Rand's life and an overview of her ideas. In addition to color and black-and-white archival footage of Rand, the film includes appearances by philosophers Harry Binswanger and Leonard Peikoff, CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace, television interviewers Phil Donahue and Tom Snyder, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, political figures Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, and Hollywood personalities Cecil B. DeMille, Edith Head, Adolphe Menjou, Marilyn Monroe and Robert Taylor.
Paxton first encountered Rand's work in 1970 at the age of 13, when he read her novel We the Living. In 1977 he saw her speak at the Ford Hall Forum, an experience that he later cited as an inspiration for his approach to the documentary.
Paxton spent four years working on the film. It was completed in 1996 and appeared that year at the Telluride Film Festival. On November 2, 1996, it premiered in Los Angeles with a special screening to benefit the Ayn Rand Institute. In January 1997, it appeared at the Slamdance Film Festival.