RUNNING FENCE

(1978) Directors: Albert Maysles, David Maysles

Available on DVD

SUMMARY:

A celebration of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's vision;
first a four-year struggle, then 24 1/2 miles of white
nylon fabric, rising from the Pacific and stretching like
a white sail across California.

Runing Fence depicts the long struggle by the artists,
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, to build a 24 mile fence of
white fabric over the hills of California disappearing into
the Pacific. Cost: 3 million dollars. The idea at first must
seem the limit of absurdity for the fence was taken down
as planned at the end of two weeks and now exists solely
on film. There is a struggle between the artists and the
state bureaucracy, who want to prevent the fence being
erected, even though the ranchers whose land it crosses
want it. Opposition seems insurmountable.

The fence finally unfurled brings the community together
in celebration of its beauty. After four years of work,
Christo sees the vision realized. "See how it describes
the wind."

VIDEO:



REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, CREDITS:

• AV Club review
• ''Try a little tenderness': some films by Albert & David Maysles' by MovieMail Online
• Video interview with Albert Maysles
• Interview with Albert Maysles from MovieMaker Magazine

NOTES:

• ''The Hollywood film is an escape of one sort or another, but our films make it damn near impossible to escape. We're interested in what you can't escape from and presenting it. One of the things that happens is that some people get a little edgy when they see something that is of most value to them because it is so personal. They don't know where to turn to look for the kind of buffer that most movies give them. In fiction you can say it's only a movie and forget it. You can't do that with reality.'' - Albert Maysles
• Jean-Luc Godard once called Albert Maysles "the best American cameraman".
• Albert and David Maysles work also includes 'Salesman', 'Gimme Shelter' and 'Grey Gardens'.

CLOSE UP

(1990) Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Available on DVD

SUMMARY:

(Abbas) Kiarostami was inspired to make the film when he came across a news item about a young man, Hossein Sabzian, who passed himself off to an upper middle class family in Teheran as the well-known film director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Sabzian gained the family’s confidence and convinced its various members that he wanted to make a film with their participation. After his exposure and arrest, Sabzian was accused of setting the family up for a burglary.

Kiarostami’s film is an extraordinary mix of documentary and fiction. He won permission to interview Sabzian in prison and to film his trial. But, most remarkably, he was also able to convince all the participants to reenact the encounters between the impostor and the family members. The family gets to star in a film after all, and so does Sabzian!

VIDEO:



REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, CREDITS:

• 'Taste of Kiarostami' interview with director Abbas Kiarostami from Film Comment
• Interview with director Abbas Kiarostami from Subtitles to Cinema
• An overwiew of the life and work of director Abbas Kiarostami from Senses of Cinema
• 'The Accidental Auteur - A Dialogue with Abbas Kiarostami' Bright Lights Film Journal

NOTES:

• Jean-Luc Godard has said: "Film begins with DW Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami."
• According to Martin Scorsese, "Kiarostami represents the highest level of artistry in the cinema."
• "The (Iranian) government has decided not to show any of my films for the past 10 years. I think they don't understand my films and so prevent them being shown just in case there is a message they don't want to get out. They tend to support films that are stylistically very different from mine - melodramas." Abbas Kiarostami
• Kiarostami's film, A Taste of Cherry, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in the year of its release

FOR ALL MANKIND

(1989) Director: Al Reinert

Available on DVD

SUMMARY:

In July 1969, the space race ended when Apollo 11 fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” No one who witnessed the lunar landing will ever forget it. Breathtaking both in the scope of its vision and the exhilaration of the human emotions it captures, For All Mankind is the story of the 24 men who traveled to the Moon—told in their words, in their voices, using the images of their experiences.

VIDEO:

The First 10 minutes of FOR ALL MANKIND


REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, CREDITS:

• Austin Chronicle review and interview with director Al Reinert

NOTES:

• DirectorAl Reinert was nominated for an Academy Award in 1996 for his screen play for Apollo 13
• Composer: Brian Eno
• In the opening scene, President John F. Kennedy stands at the podium, giving his famous speech about the government's plan for lunar travel at Rice University. In the scene, President Kennedy's voice-over says, "We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won and they must be won and used for the progress of all mankind." President Kennedy in actuality, said, "...used for the progress of all people." Director Al Reinert, using creative license, decided to splice President Kennedy's words, dubbing "mankind" over "people," using a part of the President's speech earlier on in his address.

SHERMAN'S MARCH

(1986) Director: Ross McElwee

Available on DVD

SUMMARY:

Ross McElwee sets out to make a documentary about the lingering effects of General Sherman's march of destruction through the South during the Civil War, but is continually sidetracked by women who come and go in his life, his recurring dreams of nuclear holocaust, and Burt Reynolds.

VIDEO:

Opening scene from SHERMAN'S MARCH


REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, CREDITS:

• A.V. Club reviews: 1. Noel Murray 2. Scott Tobias
  
• Scorched Earth & Bright Leaves: Ross McElwee’s Meditations on the Possibility of Documentary
• Ross McElwee’s Films: A Reaction By Ricky Leacock (PDF)
• "The World According to McElwee" - The Harvard Gazette (PDF)
• “McElwee’s March” - MovieMaker Magazine (PDF) PART 1 / PART 2
• Database of articles written by/about Director Ross McElwee

NOTES:

• "If Woody Allen made Gone With the Wind, it might resemble Sherman's March!" - People Magazine
• Added To National Film Registry in 2000.
• Richard Leacock read the historical narration for the film.
• Memorable quotes from SHERMAN'S MARCH

AMERICAN DREAMER

(1971) Directors: L.M. Kit Carson, Lawrence Schiller

Available on DVD.

SUMMARY:

This documentary explores the life of motion picture actor and director Dennis Hopper in early 1971, as he edits The Last Movie , his second directorial effort. Following Hopper from Hollywood to his beloved ranch in Taos, NM, the filmmakers ask him questions about art, movies, sex, drugs and his philosophy of life. Hopper, who owns many firearms, is frequently shown shooting guns in the desert. One day, while walking on the ranch grounds, he explains how lonely he was as a child and how as a teenager, he had painful crushes on Leslie Caron and Elizabeth Taylor. Hopper, who began acting as a teenager and has been a still photographer for many years, then postulates that despite the pain, an artist must be alone because loneliness inspires more profound work. Hopper discusses the wildly successful 1969 release Easy Rider , his first film as a director, and tries to explain how he considers American society full of criminals forged by societal restrictions. Because he believes that society has glorified both the criminal and the "outlaw," represented by the bikers in Easy Rider , he is not sure what the difference is between the bikers and those who kill them at the end of the film. Inside his house, Hopper jokes with a friend on the phone that thirty Playboy bunnies will be coming to the ranch, as the name of the documentary being made about him is The American Dreamer , and how can he be an American dreamer without "broads"? Hopper admits that he often thinks about sex and in one interlude, shares an erotic bath with two women. The director also spends many hours editing The Last Movie , from which several scenes are shown, as well as the actual process of editing it. CONTINUE SUMMARY

VIDEO:

A scene from AMERICAN DREAMER



NOTES:

• Director L.M. Kit Carson, along with Sam Shepard, wrote the 1984 Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas.
• Soundtrack to AMERICAN DREAMER available for download.
• Photography of Lawrence Schiller
• Cinematographer László Kovács can be seen in AMERICAN DREAMER while on the set of 'The Last Movie'. Some of his other credits include: 'Targets', 'Easy Rider', 'Five Easy Pieces', 'The Last Waltz', 'Ghost Busters'

EXTREME PRIVATE EROS: LOVE SONG 1974

(1974) Director: Kazuo Hara

Available on DVD.

SUMMARY:

(Kazuo) Hara's second film, and without doubt his most outrageous, personal and masochistic work. Shot over several years, mostly in handheld black-and-white and often with out-of-synch sound, this raw confessional has Hara following his ex-wife, 26-year-old radical feminist Miyuki Takeda. The two lived together for three years and share a child, as this documentary captures their post-break-up relationship and her new life without him. This was a brutal dose of reality for Japanese viewers, as it matter-of-factly tackles heartache, sex, insecurities, gender politics, and even on-camera childbirth. This is an extraordinarily intimate portrayal of the ideology, philosophy, and lives of radicals in the Vietnam era, revolving around the postwar relationship of Japan, Okinawa, and the United States. - Anthology Film Archives

Noted Japanese documentary director Kazuo Hara makes an obsessive, compelling film about Takeda Miyuki, his former lover. Drawn by her letters, he goes to Okinawa and documents this remarkably strong-willed woman as she has a relationship with an African-American soldier, bears their interracial child alone, and discusses the director's shortcomings with Hara's producer and lover, Sachiko Kobayashi. This film is a landmark in the development of Japanese documentaries, as it began a shift in perspective from collective films about social issues, as seen in Shinsuke Ogawa's early works, to intensely personal works about individuals. - Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

VIDEO:

A scene from EXTREME PRIVATE EROS



REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, CREDITS:

• Independent Film Quarterly magazine review
  
• Japan's Outlaw Filmmaker: An Interview with (Director) Kazuo Hara
• Filming at the Margins: The Documentaries of Kazuo Hara
• Kazuo Hara Crosses the Line - The Village Voice
• X-Treme Private Documentary: Michael Moore and Kazuo Hara
  

NOTES:

• "I make bitter films. I hate mainstream society." - Kazuo Hara
• Kazuo Hara also directed the 1987 film 'The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On': This documentary was five years in the making, and revolves around 62-year-old Okuzaki Kenzo, a survivor of the battlefields of New Guinea in World War II who gained notoriety by slingshooting steel pinballs at Emperor Showa to protest against what he considered to be the ruler's war crimes. Setting out to conduct interviews with survivors and relatives, he finds the truth of the past to be elusive, achieving a breakthrough only when he confronts ex-Sergeant Yamada, who grudgingly admits the occurrence and instructional source of certain atrocities.

A MARRIED COUPLE

(1969) Director: Allan King

Available on DVD.

SUMMARY:

Exploring the emotional devastation of a modern marriage in conflict, this extraordinary and controversial documentary was first released in 1969. The film presents the lives of Billy Edwards, an upwardly mobile advertising copywriter, his wife Antoinette, who craves individuality and fame, and their three-year-old son Bogart. By turn exquisitely painful and hilariously funny, this uniquely intimate portrait of a couple whose marriage is collapsing reveals the deep sense of loneliness that exists at the heart of their relationship, as well as the daily power struggles between them.

VIDEO:

A scene from A MARRIED COUPLE



REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, CREDITS:

• 'Dissection of a Marriage' Time magazine
• 'The King of cinema-verite: an interview with Allan King' Take One magazine
• 'The Fiction Documentary: Interviews with the Makers of "A Married Couple"' Film Quarterly (For purchase)
• Allan King looks back over his career and takes an overall view of our world of documentary, features and television, past and present. Kinema

NOTES:

• "King creates a drama that, in its utter nakedness, makes John Cassavetes 'Faces' look like early Doris Day. Cameraman Richard Leiterman and Soundman Christian Wangler spent ten weeks capturing 70 hours of totally undirected action. From this King distilled 100 minutes of polished film that shows none of the palsied camera work and uneven sound that plagues most cinéma vérité filming. The emotionally exhausting result achieves the ultimate artifice of the documentarist, the feeling that it was somehow made without a camera." Time Magazine, 1969.
• Featured at Director's Fortnight, Cannes, 1970
• From 'Trial by fire: a journey with Richard Leiterman' (Cinematographer on A MARRIED COUPLE): "In fact, (Allan) King trusted Leiterman so much that he had the confidence to rarely appear "on set," entrusting the film's "eyes" and "ears" to Leiterman and (Christian) Wangler (Sound recordist) . In total they shot 70 hours of film in six weeks. "While making A Married Couple, King realized he could not be on the set or in the house while we were shooting because the Edwards were continually looking to him for some kind of direction, It was just the soundman and myself. Allan would watch the results the next day and phone me and say, 'Listen, I saw the footage and such and such is working or we need a little bit more of this along this angle and so on. I think we realized we were on to something. It was a very exciting time. I think anything new and right is exciting and I still think there still is a place for this kind of work."

COCKSUCKER BLUES

(1972) Director: Robert Frank

Available on DVD.

SUMMARY:

Cocksucker Blues is an unreleased documentary film directed by Robert Frank chronicling The Rolling Stones' North American tour in 1972 in support of their album Exile on Main Street.

VIDEO:

Opening 10 minutes of COCKSUCKER BLUES



REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, CREDITS:

• Essay about three Rolling Stones films (Gimme Shelter, Symphathy for the Devil, COCKSUCKER BLUES) from Gadfly Online
• Essay on the making of COCKSUCKER BLUES from guardian.co.uk
• 'Still Rolling: 40 Years of the Rolling Stones on Film - "Cocksucker Blues" and "Shine a Light"' from IFC
• 'A rare public glimpse of the Stones at their darkest' from Rolling Stone magazine

NOTES:

• Director Robert Frank also shot the photography for the album cover of Exile On Main Street.
• The Rolling Stones were upset by this film's portrayal of them and sued to prevent its release. The film is under a court order that only allows it to be shown once a year with director Robert Frank present in person.
• Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, commenting on COCKSUCKER BLUES, called it "definitely one of the best movies about rock and roll I've ever seen. . . . It makes you think being a rock and roll star is one of the last things you'd ever want to do."
• Other documentaries featuring The Rolling Stones: The Maysles brothers "Gimme Shelter", Jean-Luc Godard's "Sympathy for the Devil", Martin Scorsese's "Shine a Light"