Rage, Maga and the Kardashians: The Teen who filmed 3000 hours from Kanye West’s Life | Documentary films

If you would go back and one of one of one of them Kanye WestThe controversial moments of the past seven years – I am not sure why you would, like the deconcentration from holy icon to cultural pariah is one of the sad pop culture stories of the decade, but let’s say you would see, in the background, a child with a camera.

He is easy-to-miss-more, often in Calabasas format sunglasses, usually with an iPhone or iPad, he is almost indistinguishable from the many fans and employees who often follow the rapper born in Chicago who is now legally known as wherever he goes. But he is always there. In the Oval Office meeting where you promised his faithfulness to Donald Trump, during his notorious “Witte Lives Matter” Paris fashion show, in each of his Messianic “Sunday service” worship -there he is, turbulent, camera trained on you.

That boy is Nico Ballesteros, who in 2016, as a teenager in the track, in your job, to record events that you hold on to his Calabasas compound. During the day, Ballesteros was a student at the Orange County School of the Arts; At night he quickly became a staple of Ye’s Entourage. “I would be texting with them in class and they would be like:” Oh, I’m with you now. We are in Malibu, with Rick Rubin’s, “” Ballesteros, now 26, recently remembered. “And I would think in class:” Why am I even here? I have to be there. “” By the last year, Ballesteros had assimilated himself in the scene of Ye. That is how he was instructed, shortly after the hospitalization of YE for mental need, to constantly film for what you had blocked as al-creative, no-holds about his bipolar disorder after the breakdown, his his, his, his his, his his, his his, his his, being, being, his, his having, his having, his having been the breakdowned, his his, his having been the right to be the breakdown, his, his having been the right to be the breakdowned, his, his having his, his bad, his having been the right to be the breakdown, his, his having been the right-down, being, being, his having his, his dowled, his having his, his having, his having been the right to be the breakdowned, his, his having been the right to have been the right to have been the right to have been the right to have been the breakdowned, his, his having been the right to have been the right-down. “Breakthrough”.).

In the next six years, Ballesteros filmed more than 3000 hours of images of YE while the superstar experienced creative breakthroughs and, more often, eruptions, meltdowns, paranoia and international opprium. The resulting film, In whose name -S this month, release release after a torturing processing is a grim fascinating portrait of an exceptionally gifted mega-cell brity in an undidnated crisis, a fly-on-the-wall view of personal and professional downfall.

In whose name offers a reverse image of the many shocking clips of YE since 2018 – the Oval Office visit, the Chicago Homecoming, the strange alliance with evangelical leader Joel Osteen, all filmed from the track of Ye, with direct access to the Waanideeëns of Grandeur and Megalomanic. The film, aimed at a wider release after one Solid Box Office Hul With almost no marketing, a special tumultuous and isolating time spans in the life of YE: his failed, Maga-Comination Presidential campaign; Slavery call a “choice” in a much elaborated TMZ interview in 2018; his separation and intimidation of, ex Kim Kardashian; the End of his lucrative partnership with Adidasincluding business deals, after several anti -Semitic tweetsIncluding: “I am a Nazi … I love Hitler.”

It is all, one would imagine, a lot for a teenager to process, let alone film ethically, but Ballesteros is in line. He claims that you, who openly reduces medication, understood the use of filming; In an early scene, recorded during the second week of Ballesteros in the work in 2018, you tell the productive producer Pharrell Williams his intention to document his mental health. “The invitation was clear to me,” said Ballesteros. In the beginning, he says, “you” was “in such a clear state of mind. He made it so clear that this was what this was for. My silence and my silence and my observation and witness to wearing was, I felt, was the best service I could offer it. “

In whose name follows in the Mal van Verité documentaries -no talking heads, no story, a non -welfare single timeline, albeit an inscrutably busy and starry sky. Ballesteros’ memories of filming are a blur because he followed the sleeping schedule of YE from three to four hours a night. In one part from 2018, Ballesteros, together with you, travel to the White House, Uganda, Los Angeles, Big Sur, Chicago and Basel, Switzerland, in a week. It was often a fight to stay awake. “The only thing I thought was, I know we have this thing I always had to record,” he remembered that he almost fell asleep in the Oval Office. “That is what we feel is the mission here. I just have to keep the shot.”

During the whirlwind, Ballesteros witnesses the anger of Ye to his wife and her family, Kardashian’s tears while you publicly join Donald Trump. “I’d rather be dead than on medication!” He shouts at Kris Jenner in one scene was difficult to finish. (Van de Kardashians said Ballesteros: “They have always been so respectful for me … They clearly knew what I was doing there and they appreciated it,” although he was vague about whether they had conversations about a documentary that looks like the tightly controlled image of their media empire of their media empire, there is a certain people. “)

He also witnesses the insistence of you, in meetings with shocked managers and artistic directors, that he is the greatest artist of all time, a Picasso, a visionary for “not a slave to these companies”. He serves as a predominantly silent fourth wall for the claims of YE of the goal; In a scene that extends the meaning of surrealistic, you, some done in feline prostheses, the camera is it that it is “mentally free”, because being bipolar means that everything is a work of art.

You can wonder if there was ever a point – say, when a smoking, clearly disturbed you come into the face of Kardashian – that the camera should stop. But Ballesteros is on the inherent neutrality of the project. “Although I was young, I understood what it meant more or less to be a journalist. And I knew that in between was not my responsibility or my role, and that I would then exceed a line,” he says. (You treated him well, he said – “He was always so respectful for when I had to take a beat to just rest”, although he “didn’t like when I stopped recording, because I think he just wanted to feel, ultimately.”)

Even at the most shocking moments of Ye – and there are enough because he is insisting on calling slavery, devoid of a historical accuracy – “I have always just maintained journalistic integrity,” he said. “I knew that it was professional to do, to keep my own personal opinions out. Because if I started to formulate opinions and formulate the points of view, it would create a bias. And I did not want to change what I initially meant, namely creating an objective observation documentary.” He claims that you had no input on the end product, although the two watched together, has an experience Ballesteros described As “beautiful”.

Undoubtedly, the most fascinating observation is not the grim descent of you into right -wing nihilism, but how everyone around him hardly reacts. Ballesteros films in what constant contact seems to be with the uber-rich, powerful and provocative: Elon Musk, Jacques Herzog, Donald Trump, Drake, Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens-all exaggerated, none of those who challenges his ego, Save Swizz Beatznn. (Chris Rock ensures that his off-script Tirade defends his Maga-hat, will fall as Sinéad O’Connor who tears a photo of the Pope.) Everywhere he goes, cameras, enthusiastic face, dedication, fascination “a reality reproduction field” of Roem. The name of the film, with its religious overtones, raises questions about our constant attention and loyalty, in the light of madness.

But although in whose name is partly “a film about idolatry”, Ballesteros said that his ultimate goal was compassion. “Many of those things that may have taken place in all those headlines … Was not the deepest part of which this person is,” he said.

“Maybe there is some empathy,” he added. “It is not necessary to convince someone of everything, but I wanted to make a study of people, not the idol.”