By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER TO CO-HOST TRIBUTE  ALBERT MAYSLES 

Posted Monday, September 21st, 2015 - Comments Off on THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER TO CO-HOST TRIBUTE  ALBERT MAYSLES 
Be Sociable, Share!

The Film Society of Lincoln Center will co-host a tribute to the late legendary documentarian Albert Maysles at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday, October 4 at 10AM. It will coincide with the 53rd New York Film Festival (September 25 – October 11), and all tickets will be free to the public. The event will be co-hosted by the Maysles family and will include special in-person appearances and a selection of clips to celebrate the work of this remarkable filmmaker. The event will also highlight Albert’s work with the Maysles Documentary Center, the nonprofit organization he started in Harlem in 2005. For more information, visit filmlinc.org/maysles.

New York Film Festival Director Kent Jones reflects on the filmmaker: “Al Maysles’s touch with the camera is as distinctive as Richter’s on the piano or Miles Davis’s with his horn. And his sensitivity to human energies is inseparable from his fierce love for the people he filmed—all those faces over all those years. Make that: for people, period. That love was with him to the very end. It was always great to see Al, to hang out with him. He was modest, thoughtful, and unfailingly generous, to young people in particular. In fact, he was so unassuming that it comes as a shock, still, to realize that he and his brother David were two of the people who actually opened up and expanded the art of cinema.”

 

“An empathetic, gifted filmmaker who left us with a series of unresolvable ethical questions and a treasure trove of indelible images.” – Chris Boeckmann, Film Comment

“The dean of documentary filmmakers.” – The New York Times

“The best American cameraman.” – Jean-Luc Godard

Born in 1926, Albert Maysles was a pioneer of Direct Cinema and, along with his late brother, David, was the first to make nonfiction feature films in which the drama of life unfolds as is, without scripts, sets, interviews, or narration. Albert made his first film, Psychiatry in Russia (1955), as he transitioned from psychologist to filmmaker. Among his more than 40 films are some of the most iconic works in documentary history, including Salesman, Gimme Shelter, and Grey Gardens. In 2009, Albert directed the award-winning film Muhammad and Larry for ESPN’s series 30 for 30, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!, and then reunited with Paul McCartney in 2011 for The Love We Make. Last year’s 52nd New York Film Festival presented the World Premiere of Maysles’s Iris, and his final film, In Transit, received the Special Jury Prize at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year. Albert has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Peabody Awards, three Emmy Awards, six Lifetime Achievement Awards, the Columbia DuPont Award, and the award for best cinematography at Sundance for LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton (2001), which was also nominated for an Academy Award. Eastman Kodak has saluted him as one of the world’s 100 finest cinematographers. Albert received the 2013 National Medal of the Arts from President Barack Obama.

Free tickets will be distributed in the lobby of Alice Tully Hall (1941 Broadway) on a first-come, first-served basis starting one hour prior to the event. Limit one ticket per person, subject to availability.

ABOUT FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
Founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center works to recognize established and emerging filmmakers, support important new work, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility, and understanding of the moving image. The Film Society produces the renowned New York Film Festival, a curated selection of the year’s most significant new film work, and presents or collaborates on other annual New York City festivals including Dance on Camera, Film Comment Selects, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, New York African Film Festival, New York Asian Film Festival, New York Jewish Film Festival, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema and Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. In addition to publishing the award-winning Film Comment magazine, the Film Society recognizes an artist’s unique achievement in film with the prestigious Chaplin Award, whose 2015 recipient was Robert Redford. The Film Society’s state-of-the-art Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, located at Lincoln Center, provide a home for year-round programs and the New York City film community.

The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from American Airlines, The New York Times, HBO, Stella Artois, The Kobal Collection, Variety, Loews Regency Hotel, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

For more information, visit www.filmlinc.org, follow @filmlinc on Twitter, and download the FREE Film Society app, now available for iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android devices.

Be Sociable, Share!

Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | Comments Off on THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER TO CO-HOST TRIBUTE  ALBERT MAYSLES 

Comments are closed.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon