Legendary filmmaker Maysles to show work, teach at fest

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This article was published 13/10/2011 (5478 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A legendary 84-year-old documentarian who captured the Rolling Stones in Gimme Shelter and a pair of eccentric socialites in Grey Gardens is appearing tonight through Saturday at the Winnipeg Film Group’s fourth annual Gimme Some Truth documentary festival and forum.

Albert Maysles (pronounced Mazels) will introduce a screening of Grey Gardens tonight at 7 at Cinematheque, followed by a 9 p.m. reception at the Winnipeg Free Press News Café.

The famous and influential 1976 documentary follows “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale, mother-and-daughter relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy who lived in reclusive squalor in a decaying mansion. It was remade in 2009 as an HBO movie starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore.

Maysles will also introduce his classic 1968 black-and-white doc Salesman at 9 p.m. on Friday, and lead a master class on non-fiction directing on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tickets are still available for all three events. It’s believed to be Maysles first time in Winnipeg.

“We’ve been trying to get him for a while,” said the WFG’s Cecilia Araneda, producer of the festival.

Maysles, now based in New York, was born in Boston. With his brother David, who died in 1987, he was a pioneer of the Direct Cinema movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Their films include a documentary on the Beatles’ first visit to the U.S. in 1964.

Their revolutionary fly-on-the-wall style, using newly developed portable equipment, was to simply record events as they happened, rather than trying to control or intrude upon their subjects.

“The Maysles brothers just allowed these engaging human beings to speak for themselves,” said Araneda.

Among the other screenings at the four-day festival is The Upsetter, a portrait of the life and music of Lee Scratch Perry, one of the fathers of reggae music. Director Adam Bhala Lough will introduce that film on Saturday at 7 p.m. and give a master class on making independent music docs.

Saturday at 9 p.m., the festival screens Nostalgia for the Light, an award-winning recent documentary by the Chilean Patricio Guzman. It has been hailed as a masterpiece for the parallels it draws between astronomers’ celestial quest and the search for the remains of the “disappeared” following the 1973 coup in Chile.

Schedule and ticket information at www.gimmesometruth.ca