Bill Cunningham New York

Bill Cunningham New York (2011) is a documentary worth watching online on iFILM. Director Richard Press spent eight years tailing the legendary New York Times photographer who shot Manhattan's street style from the seat of a bicycle.

In his eighties, dressed in a blue French workman's jacket, Cunningham pedals up Fifth Avenue catching whatever the city will be wearing tomorrow. He turns down money, treats glittering parties as a job rather than a perk, and keeps almost no private life of his own. Anna Wintour, Tom Wolfe and Iris Apfel drift through the frame, yet the real story is a man who spent decades looking at everyone else while refusing to be looked at himself.

Press never inflates his subject into a saint; he edges quietly toward the loneliness and self-denial underneath. The result is a rare portrait of obsession where, behind the clothes, a whole way of living comes into view. Stream Bill Cunningham New York (2011) online on iFILM.