“… the dean of documentary filmmakers, Albert Maysles.”
The New York Times, May 6, 2002

David Maysles, Mick Jagger, Albert Maysles and Charlie Watts during the making of Gimmie Shelter.

Oscar®-nominated documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles will present an overview of his work and discuss his particular approach to the documentary form in an evening of conversation and film clips as the Academy’s spring 2007 John Huston Lecture on Documentary Film.

As Direct Cinema pioneers Albert Maysles and his brother David were among the first to make nonfiction feature films (Grey Gardens, Gimme Shelter, Salesman) in which the drama of life unfolds without scripts, sets, interviews or narration.  Albert Maysles’ first film, Psychiatry in Russia (1955), was made during his transition to documentary filmmaking after three years of teaching psychology at Boston University.  His collaborations with his brother David helped bring the “cinéma vérité” style to American moviemaking.  In the 1960s the Maysles created acclaimed documentaries on producer Joseph E. Levine (Showman), Marlon Brando (Meet Marlon Brando) and Truman Capote (With Love from Truman), culminating in their classic Salesman, about door-to-door Bible salesmen.

The 1970s saw the release of two famous and markedly different features from the Maysles.  Gimme Shelter depicted the notorious Rolling Stones concert at Altamont and was a revealing portrait of lead singer Mick Jagger.  Grey Gardens looked at the lives of the Beales, two eccentric, reclusive relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy.  The film is one of the most popular documentaries of all time, even inspiring a current Broadway musical.

The Maysles’ collaborations include several films about the artist Christo; they received an Academy Award® nomination in the Documentary Short Subject category for Christo’s Valley Curtain (1973).  Although David died in 1987, their company, Maysles Films, is as prolific as ever.  Among its later projects is the Oscar-nominated feature LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton (2001), which Albert Maysles photographed and co-directed.

The Academy’s John Huston Lecture on Documentary Film is a series named to honor Huston’s legacy as witnessed in his controversial World War II documentaries Report from the Aleutians (1943), The Battle of San Pietro (1944) and Let There Be Light (1946).  The Battle of San Pietro was not shown publicly until 1945, when General George Marshall removed its “classified” status.  Let There Be Light was banned for decades by the U.S. War Department, the very agency that commissioned it, before it was finally released in 1980.