Project Detail

The Ballad of A J Weberman

Synopsis

Bob Dylan once said 'I don't think I'm gonna be really understood until maybe 100 years from now'. Author of the Dylan To English Dictionary, a Dylanologist and originator of Garbology (the practice of rooting through rubbish in order to gain insight into prominent people's lives), A J Weberman has made it his life's work to understand Bob Dylan.

At times hilarious, at other times disturbing, this film is an interesting observation on our unbalanced desires to know more about celebrities and how far we are willing to go to get that information. Weberman does not see himself as a stalker and insists that Dylan should be grateful that he is around: 'I would have been to Dylan what Verlaine was to Rimbaud'. It's hard to see this as a tale of poet and critic, but rather a look at the bizarre relationship between the obsessed and the object of his obsession and how it can completely take over a man's life.

A hilarious recorded telephone conversation between A J Weberman and Bob Dylan from the 1970s punctuates the film in the form of animations, creating connections between Weberman's past and present. The film also enjoys a memorable cast of secondary characters including New York street poet David Peel, former child dancer Jay Byrd and Aaron Kay 'The Pieman'. To top it all, the film features a vivid Americana soundtrack performed by cast members, which adds a surreal commentary to the proceedings, creating a documentary like no other.
 

Details

Year
2008
Type of project
Features
Running time
83 mins
Format
Beta/ DV Cam
Director
James Bluemel, Oliver Ralfe 1st Feature
Producer
James Bluemel, Oliver Ralfe
Editor
James Bluemel

Production Status

Production Company

Sheepshead Films

3 Barnet Street
Oxford OX4 3AN
UK

T+ 44 (0)18 6525 0204

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

See also

You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

A transmasc driver sits in their car staring out of the window Dread

Director: Gabe Gabriel, Loren Loubser

Year: 2026

Soft-spoken transmasc driver, Toni, is used to dealing with an array of strange customers in their day-to-day work transporting locals and tourists through the economically divided City of Cape Town in their late father’s vintage Daimler. But when Claudia, a German digital nomad with blonde dreadlocks, offloads a traumatic story on a short ride across town, Toni’s car becomes dangerously possessed with Claudia’s invisible trauma demon. Inside Out Film Festival 2026 Wicked Queer: Boston's LGBTQ+ Film Festival 2026

Main character from The Things We Don't Say lying on the ground, looking contemplative The Things We Don't Say

Director: Ornella Mutoni

Year: 2024

A group of young adults born during or just after the 1994 genocide against Rwanda's Tutsi people gather to find the courage to break a powerful taboo. Rwanda is one of the few nations in the world providing specialist counselling for children conceived through rape, who number 10,000 across the country. Here, course leader Emilienne, a mother, therapist and genocide survivor, helps the group to imagine a future free from family secrets and societal stigma. In a circle of supportive peers, they tell their individual stories and face their struggles together, in the hope their participation will advocate for others facing similar trauma. Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2024 NY African Film Festival 2025

A disturbed looking man stares straight into the camera Welcome

Director: Maryam Hamidi

Year: 2026

A famous Black actor accepts a role in a lucrative government film, but when he learns he’s starring in a welcome video for a British Internment camp, he is confronted by the devastating cost of his political indifference.