The Globe Collector

Opening with Also Sprach Zarathustra is the most and last conventional thing that this documentary does. Director Summer DeRoche opens her film with close-ups of filaments (the term "light bulb" is not used by aficionados), glowing whorls of resistance - one of them, unremarked upon, bears the crown and the letters ER, others are chandeliers of wire.

Andrew Pullen is Summer's subject, Andrew and his collection of some ten thousand lamps. Beautifully shot, with occasional intertitles of stark yellow text, it's a touching and human portrait of a somewhat odd individual. Andrew's quite cheerful about his diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome, but the condition's influence on him isn't the focus here. He admits he has difficulty with interpersonal skills, trouble speaking to his father, finds it hard to get a job. It's the lightbulbs, sorry, the lamps, that matter to him. There's some that run off arcane rigs that at some point seem to convert Australian amps into angels that then accumulate upon the head of a pin, some powered by Summer herself pedalling on a hand-built bicycle, one that, well, it's unexpected when the glass is removed from it and the aftermath is even more surprising, and one that's genuinely amazing - a lamp with a "colour rendering index of zero", it makes things black and white. Take note, experimental film-makers - you need one of those, they are amazing.

DeRoche has created a documentary that's both heart-warming and illuminating - she shows greater restraint than your reviewer in avoiding puns, neatly uses text to convey things that text conveys best, and the "featured lamps" credit page is a triumph. Good documentary looks at an interesting subject, great documentary looks in interesting ways - this is very much the latter, and you should see it if you can.