Throughout her career, Selma Blair has been one of the most versatile and exciting actresses onscreen, beginning with comedic roles in pop culture classics in the 2000s.
Selma’s documentary, Introducing, Selma Blair, directed by Rachel Fleit, is a deeply intimate and raw portrait of Selma after she is diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and tries to slow the progression of her disease. The film is now streaming on discovery+.
Here’s a look at five documentaries that influenced Selma Blair:
Big Edie and Little Edie living in the decay of the once beautiful Hamptons family estate endlessly charmed me and saddened me for decades.
I watched this with my favorite friends over 20 years ago. A much coveted prize truck in Texas is awarded to the last hand on. Funny and gripping.
The film that changed my limited perspective on people with disabilities. Through following a young group of people at a summer camp where they could let go and have the time of their adolescent lives to some changing the world through perseverance and ingenuity. There have been few documentaries to familiarize us with the history and challenges of the disability rights movement. Dignified, funny and humanizing, I have not seen our “able driven” society in the same way since. Encore!
This documentary from 1996, I watched on a plane flight and reignited my childhood crush into full-fledged admiration of Ali, who stepped up to this fight, the Rumble in the Jungle, the expected loser, but cemented himself as the greatest of all time when Ali told the world who he was. I was 2 when this fight took place, but I grew up knowing I ♥️ Ali, as my favorite T-shirt my parents brought back from Vegas announced.
She was my era, but I only knew her voice, the pink ballet shoes and a black beehive. This documentary showed Amy in her sweetness and also sickness of addiction. I left the theater heartbroken for her life, her generosity to the camera and her parasitic father. Even though this was done posthumously, it left me rewriting new endings for the little girl with the biggest, grown-up voice.
