TV REVIEW : ‘Self Portraits’: Tales of the Videotape

The global spread of the personal video camera might eventually have as profound an impact on the uses of communications as the global embrace of the personal computer, and an hourlong compilation of home videos titled “Self Portraits” is one of the early indicators of how far the Hi-8 video camera has traveled from suburban back yard birthday parties.

So, too, was George Holliday’s taping of the Rodney G. King beating. But with “Self Portraits” (at 10 tonight on Showtime, with repeats at 1:55 p.m. Tuesday, 1:40 a.m. March 14 and 2:50 a.m. March 22), producers Skip Lane and Robert Edward Altman arranged for people of all ages living on every continent to make brief video accounts of their lives. The camera, used as a mirror, is then projected back out onto the world.

Lane and Altman took the unnecessary step of arranging the pieces under sometimes arbitrary thematic sections (“Awakening,” “Coming of Age,” “Self Expression,” “Suffering,” “Wisdom”).

And if those titles betray a new-age slant, so do some of the selections: American Indians, Buddhists, a piece by new-age musician Kitaro, and a closing shot of the Earth from space. While there’s a lovely video missive from an Israeli kibbutz, the voices of Christianity and Islam are notably silent.

Along with the sacred is the profane, depicted in one piece by a Brazilian hooker who strips for the camera, and in another by a Parisian man who takes his sister out at night for sexual encounters with strangers (which is perhaps why this show isn’t popping up on PBS).

The new-age credo of natural balances seems to have steered the selections: here, a Holocaust survivor returning to the camp in which he nearly died; there, a young Nazi Berliner complains about how tough it is for white people.

Giving equal time to evil and good is an ethical quagmire that “Self Portraits” unconsciously sinks into, and it’s never fully rescued by the the strong contributions of aboriginal musician Yothu Yindi, or one-armed, one-legged world traveler David Roberston or AIDS patient Michael Knapp, calmly preparing for death.