“Reality isn’t something you can control, or try to, in making a documentary film. It’s only real if you let it happen on its own . . . .” — Albert Maysles, talking to the North Shore News in May, 2010 (for full interview go to http://www.nsnews.com/entertainment/albert-maysles-letting-reality-happen-1.1810232 and http://issuu.com/canwestcommunitypublishing/docs/nsnfri20100430/13).
Documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles liked to shoot first and ask questions later.
Editing footage was such an important part of the process that he and his brother David preferred to give editors co-billing on their films. The Stones watching themselves in the editing room during Gimme Shelter is a key scene that the Maysles returned to again and again throughout the film.
Albert Maysles passed away March 5 at the age of 88 and to celebrate his life and work Pacific Cinémathèque is screening the Maysles Brothers’ Grey Gardens (1976) several times over the next week starting tonight at 8:30 p.m.
Grey Gardens was voted one of the 10 best documentaries ever made by Sight & Sound in a 2014 film critics poll. The film has also been selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant.”
Vancity Theatre will also be screening the Maysles’ Stones documentary Gimme Shelter (1970) on Monday, April 13 at 8:30 p.m. as part of their Music Monday series. For more information visit thecinematheque.ca/grey-gardens and viff.org/theatre/series/music-mondays.
