In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey is a 2012 documentary film that focuses on the life of the musician John Fahey, who is considered the father of American primitive guitar.[1] The documentary was filmed and based in Washington D.C., where Fahey was born; the Mississippi Delta, where Fahey met and recorded with many musicians; and Salem, Oregon, where Fahey resided during the last 20 years of his life. The documentary includes a series of video clips of Fahey's performances and interviews with those who were involved with the musician in his personal and professional life up until his death in 2001.[2] The film gives viewers an understanding of what Fahey's personal world was like, and how he worked as a musician through animation, interviews, video clips, and documentations of Fahey.[3]
Music critic Richie Unterberger called the film "well done" and respectful, but noted the film "could have been more comprehensive."[5] Writing for The Quietus, Sean Kitching praised the film as a "wonderful, expressionist documentary [that] admirably portrays the many facets of the man behind the music and the myth."[3] Conversely, Jake Cole, writing for Spectrum Culture, summarized the film as "never [rising] above the mark of a mildly adventurous TV special, and its stylistic cleverness cannot disguise that this is, at heart, not far off from a cursory overview" and claimed "there is a gap here that makes Cullingham’s inventive and atypical approach to artist biography feel incorporeal. It avoids the pitfall of over-explaining an artist with a dull information-dump, but it nevertheless fails to fully join its impressionistic melding of image with Fahey’s music to any deeper revelations, which results in a play of signs without a signifier."[6]
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