Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life

Three YouTube excerpts from the movie, Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life. One. Two. Three.  Footage from interviews with Rand, and commentary by Leonard Peikoff and Harry Binswanger. 

Comments

[Paracelsus]

If you look through the rest of the videos from the user's channel you can find the whole documentary.

A Sense of Life in 14 parts:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=MoOnL1ght123&view=videos&query=ayn+rand

[Neil Parille]

Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life was produced by someone associated with the Ayn Rand Institute (the organization with which Drs. Peikoff and Binswanger are associted). So it is entirely positive portrayal of Rand, though enjoyable nonetheless.

For those who don't know, Rand split with Nathaniel and Barbara Branden in 1968. Barbara Branden wrote a biography of Rand called The Passion of Ayn Rand in 1986. It is the only full length biography of Rand. The archivist at the Ayn Rand Archives (which is associated with the ARI), wrote a brief biography of Rand. His name is Jeff Britting.

So for such a famous person there is a relative lack of biographical material (Branden's biography is good, but written by a former insider).

Anne Heller is coming out with a long biography of Rand in November (Ayn Rand and the World She Made). Last I heard, she did not get access of the archives.

Leonard Peikoff and Harry Binswanger did not coorporate with Branden's biography. I don't know if they have given interviews to Anne Heller (I doubt it).

For years we have heard that there will be an "authorized" biography of Rand. A literary scholar Shoshana Milgram (associated with the ARI) is working on an intellectual biography of Rand up to 1957.

[MandM]

Very interesting. I have always found Rand fascinating though I do not subscribe to her "philosophy" I find something akin to it within Christianity.

[Neil Parille]

There is also a book coming out soon entitled Ayn Rand: Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns.

[Richard Lawrence]

There is perhaps more biographical material available on Rand than people realize. See http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/biofaq.html#Q7 for details. What is clearly missing, though, is an in-depth biography from an author that isn't skewed by obvious bias. Whether Heller or Burns will rectify that remains to be seen.

[Neil Parille]

Richard,

I agree that someone such as Barbara Branden who split with Rand has a "bias," but at it's too soon to say that her biography is "skewed by obvious bias."

Barbara Branden's biography covers many aspects of Rand's life that aren't discussed in the other sources, so I don't think there is much we can compare it to and arrive at a conclusion of "obvious bias."

This isn't, of course, to say that it's the last word on Rand or that her portrayal of Rand's personality might not be off a bit.