Acclaimed documentarian Albert Maysles passed away on March 5, 2015. In honor of his contributions to the genre, the DGA Special Projects Committee’s Documentary series screened one of his most memorable films Grey Gardens.
Released in 1975, Grey Gardens tells the story of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ reclusive cousins Big and Little Edie Beale, mother and daughter high-society dropouts who live eccentric lives in a decaying and filthy mansion in East Hampton in an eerily ramshackle echo of the American Camelot. The film is admired by Maysles’ fellow filmmakers for its innovations and was added to the National Film Registry by the National Film Preservation Board in 2010.
Following the screening in the Guild’s Los Angeles Theater on August 13, there was a discussion about Maysles’ life and career featuring Directors Joan Churchill (Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer) who worked with him on the seminal film Gimme Shelter; and Maysles’ contemporary and friend Haskell Wexler (Four Days in Chicago). The conversation was moderated by Director Richard Pearce (Leap of Faith).
Born in 1926, Albert Maysles started making non-fiction features beginning with Psychiatry in Russia in 1955. He frequently collaborated with his brother David and they pioneered the “fly on the wall” perspective in documentary cinema. His more than 40 films include some of the most iconic works in documentary history such as Salesman, Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens. He earned an Academy Award nomination for Christo's Valley Curtain (with David Maysles); a DGA Award nomination for Soldiers of Music (with Peter Gelb, Susan Froemke, and Bob Eisenhardt) and won Emmy Awards for Vladimir Horowitz: The Last Romantic (with David Maysles) and Soldiers of Music. Prior to his passing, Maysles also received the National Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama.