News

Documentary festival IDFA, which runs Nov. 8 to 19 in Amsterdam, has revealed its first 50 titles, including the top 10 Chinese films selected by Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing, IDFA’s Guest of Honor.

The festival has also revealed the films playing in two of the three Focus programs: Fabrications, which probes the difference between reality and realism, and 16 Worlds on 16, an homage to 16mm film.

Wang’s selection will take the viewer “on a contemplative journey into contemporary Chinese cinema,” according to the festival. “The films and their politics are subtle in their film language, representing a wave of filmmaking rarely shown internationally.”

The selection (see below), which covers films produced since 1999, includes Lixin Fan’s 2009 film “Last Train Home,” which was supported by IDFA’s Bertha Fund. The film documents the millions of migrant factory workers that travel home for Spring Festival each year.

Fabrications explores the relationship of trust between documentary film and audiences,...

Documentarian Ellen Hovde, best known for co-directing the groundbreaking film “Grey Gardens” with the Maysles brothers, has died at age 97.

Hovde’s February 16 passing was confirmed last week by her children, Tessa Huxley and Mark Trevenen Huxley, who said the cause was Alzheimer’s disease, and shared July 11 with The New York Times.

“Grey Gardens” was released in 1975 and followed the reclusive relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Edie Beale and her mother Edith Beale, who lived in East Hampton, New York in a deteriorating mansion. The film was co-directed by Hovde, Albert Maysles, and David Maysles. Hovde began working with the Maysles in the 1960s as a contributing editor on “Salesman,” their documentary made with Charlotte Zwerin about traveling Bible salesmen, and also worked as an editor on their Rolling Stones documentary “Gimme Shelter.” She was a credited director with the Maysles on their artist portrait “Christo’s Valley Curtain,...

Just in time for Succession‘s end, let’s look at method acting. The Criterion Channel are highlighting the controversial practice in a 27-film series centered on Brando, Newman, Nicholson, and many other’s embodiment of “an intensely personal, internalized, and naturalistic approach to performance.” That series makes mention of Marilyn Monroe, who gets her own, 11-title highlight––the iconic commingling with deeper cuts.

Pride Month offers “Masc,” a consideration of “trans men, butch lesbians, and gender-nonconforming heroes” onscreen; the Michael Koresky-curated Queersighted returning with a study of the gay best friend; and the 20-film “LGBTQ+ Favorites.” Louis Garrel’s delightful The Innocent (about which I talked to him here), the director’s cut of Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation, and Stanley Kwan’s hugely underseen Lan Yu make streaming premieres, while Araki’s Totally F***ed Up and Mysterious Skin also get a run. Criterion Editions include Five Easy Pieces,...

An array of the most acclaimed documentaries of the last 50 years bear the stamp of one singular talent: Joan Churchill, filmmaker and cinematographer.

Her first credit, in 1970, came as a camera operator on Gimme Shelter, the classic documentary about the Rolling Stones at Altamont directed by the Maysles Brothers and Charlotte Zwerin. She’s been shooting films ever since, including Jimi at Berkeley (1971); Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll (1987); Kurt & Courtney (1998); Biggie & Tupac (2002); Shut Up & Sing, the 2006 doc about the Dixie Chicks, and the Oscar-nominated Last Days in Vietnam (2014).

She also co-directed a number of award-winning films with her former husband Nick Broomfield, including Soldier Girls (1981); Lily Tomlin (1986); Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003), and 2011’s Sarah Palin: You Betcha!

In honor of her career in cinema, Churchill is being recognized with the Lifetime Achievement Award at Doc NYC, the country’s largest all-documentary festival, which opens today.

Fifty years ago this Sunday, the Rolling Stones released Gimme Shelter, the infamous documentary that started as a look at the final days of the British bad boys’ legendary 1969 tour, leading up to the disastrous free concert at Altamont Speedway. It ended up becoming the ultimate rock & roll horror movie. Directors Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin’s time capsule is always a trip to revisit, but especially now — after nine months without live music, even Altamont looks tantalizing. It’s tough to watch the film in 2020 without musing,...

Above: French poster for Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin, France, 1961). Design by Raymond Gid.There is an essential and vital film series opening today at Film Forum in New York: a survey of 1960s Cinema Verité productions which brings vividly to life a decade of instability and protest as well as a new era of introspection. While this survey of posters doesn’t give a complete look at the series—“more than 50 modern classics which not only changed the recording of social history, but revolutionized filmmaking itself”—since many of the films are not feature-length (some of the shows pair an hour long film with a 30 minute short) and thus were not theatrically released. But those that I’ve gathered do convey the urgency of the movement as well as its seat-of-the-pants guerrilla style of film marketing as much as film making.I’ve not included the...

As is annual tradition, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden has announced this year’s 25 film set to join the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Selected for their “cultural, historic and/or aesthetic importance,” the films picked range from such beloved actioners as “Die Hard,” childhood classic “The Goonies,” the seminal “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” and the mind-bending “Memento,” with plenty of other genres and styles represented among the list.

The additions span 1905 to 2000, and includes Hollywood blockbusters, documentaries, silent movies, animation, shorts, independent, and even home movies. The 2017 selections bring the number of films in the registry to 725.

“The selection of a film to the National Film Registry recognizes its importance to American cinema and the nation’s cultural and historical heritage,” Hayden said in an official statement. “Our love affair with motion pictures is a testament to their enduring power to enlighten, inspire and...

Since 1989, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress has been accomplishing the important task of preserving films that “represent important cultural, artistic and historic achievements in filmmaking.” From films way back in 1897 all the way up to 2004, they’ve now reached 725 films that celebrate our heritage and encapsulate our film history.

Today they’ve unveiled their 2017 list, which includes such Hollywood classics as Die Hard, Titanic, and Superman along with groundbreaking independent features like Yvonne Rainer’s Lives of Performers, Charles Burnett’s To Sleep with Anger, and Barbara Loden’s Wanda. Also making this list are a pair of Kirk Douglas-led features, Ace in the Hole and Spartacus, as well as Christopher Nolan’s Memento and more. Check out the full list below and you can watch some films on the registry for free here.

Ace in the Hole (aka Big Carnival) (1951)

Based on the infamous...

Each month, the fine folks at FilmStruck and the Criterion Collection spend countless hours crafting their channels to highlight the many different types of films that they have in their streaming library. This April will feature an exciting assortment of films, as noted below.

To sign up for a free two-week trial here.

Monday, April 3 The Chaos of Cool: A Tribute to Seijun Suzuki

In February, cinema lost an icon of excess, Seijun Suzuki, the Japanese master who took the art of the B movie to sublime new heights with his deliriously inventive approach to narrative and visual style. This series showcases seven of the New Wave renegade’s works from his career breakthrough in the sixties: Take Aim at the Police Van (1960), an off-kilter whodunit; Youth of the Beast (1963), an explosive yakuza thriller; Gate of Flesh (1964), a pulpy social critique; Story of a Prostitute (1965), a tragic romance; Tokyo Drifter...

The haunting Rolling Stones documentary “Gimme Shelter” helped close the book on the ’60s. Nearly a half-century later, writer/director Jody Hill argues that those terrors remain fresh.

Read More: Watch: ‘Jackie’ Director Pablo Larraín Discusses ‘Movies That Inspire Me’ in New IndieWire Video Series Presented by FilmStruck

Legendary documentary filmmaking duo Albert and David Maysles, along with Charlotte Zwerin, captured the excess and fatal mishandling of the landmark Altamont Free Concert in December 1969. Following the Stones through their American tour and invitation to headline the fateful show, the film eventually embeds itself in the Altamont audience, looking on as a murder plays out beneath the band’s performance.

For our fourth installment in our “Movies That Inspire Me” conversation series, presented in partnership with FilmStruck, we spoke to Hill about how the film slowly unfolds from an impeccably made rock doc into something with a more sinister edge. Hill describes a film that,...

Milestone wraps up its ‘Project Shirley,’ an in-depth study of the independent director of The Connection and Portrait of Jason. Practically all of Shirley Clarke’s small and experimental films are here from the early 1950s forward, plus a wealth of biographical film.

The Magic Box: The films of Shirley Clarke, 1929-1987

Blu-ray

The Milestone Cinematheque

1929-1987 / B&W + Color

1:37 flat full frame / 502 min.

Street Date November 15, 2016 / 99.99

featuring Shirley Clarke

Produced by Dennis Doros & Amy Heller

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Some disc boutique companies license ready-made movie classics for home video, and some slap whatever odd-sourced items can be had into the Blu-ray format and call it a restoration. Although the general tide for quality releases is rising, only a few companies will invest time and effort in historically- and artistically- important films lacking an obvious commercial hook. Milestone Films has been consistent in its championing of abandoned ‘marginal’ films,...

Some documentaries work as investigative journalism, while others function as slice-of-life storytelling. There’s also the subgenre of doc that’s largely experiential, inviting the audience to witness a performance or event that they’d otherwise never get to see. Kevin Macdonald’s Sky Ladder: The Art Of Cai Guo-Qiang encompasses a little bit of all of the above. A portrait of an ambitious and often personally conflicted environmental artist, Sky Ladder has a lot in common with the likes of Rivers And Tides and the Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin’s Christo films, in that it creates a permanent cinematic record of work designed to be ephemeral. But Macdonald also captures the long, hard struggle of Cai Guo-Qiang to realize some of his grandest projects, often over the objections of his own government and patrons.

The primary focus of Sky Ladder is Cai’s long-gestating dream to create a...

Four episodes were provided prior to broadcast.

Returning to IFC this fall is one of the most peculiar, inventive comedies on TV, the veritable documentary spoof factory Documentary Now! Created by SNL MVPs Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and their ever-loving godfather Lorne Michaels, the show found its niche on the “always on, slightly off” cable network by spoofing some of the most popular documentaries of all time, appealing to the indie-minded set while providing enough surface-level humor to appease fans of their famous late-night shenanigans. The show’s first season goofed on classics like The Thin Blue Line, Grey Gardens and Nanook of the North, and now the comedy triumvirate is back with a new lineup of 20-minute spoofs.

The new one-off episodes each have unique charms, from “Globesman,” a take on Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin’s Salesman, to “Bunker,” a timely homage (considering the...

If there is one blemish in Jim Jarmusch’s exceptional filmography, it’s his first foray into documentary: 1997’s little-seen Year of the Horse, a surprisingly insipid portrait of Neil Young and Crazy Horse on tour. He gives it a second try with Gimme Danger, another homage to a legendary rock band, The Stooges, which, though more enjoyable and informative, nevertheless confirms that the director should stick to fiction.

Those hoping for something in the line of the Maysles brothers’ and Charlotte Zwerin’s Gimme Shelter will be sorely disappointed, as similarities don’t extend much beyond their titles. Unlike that canonical masterpiece, Jarmusch’s film is a strictly conventional affair that resembles any number of TV documentaries.

Addressing the camera, Iggy Pop (née James Osterberg) narrates the history of The Stooges, starting with a childhood living in a cramped trailer with his parents in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He describes...

David’s Quick Take for the tl;dr Media Consumer:

Though it’s far from sadistic or brutal, Salesman is designed to stir up a viewer’s discomfort, even to the point of outrage, with an end goal of rousing our empathy. The merciless exposure of a quartet of traveling door-to-door Bible peddlers (though they’re explicitly told to avoid thinking of themselves in such terms) strikes us as quite funny at first but gradually wears us down to a state of mournful pity as we tap into the grim desperation that pushes them forward to each new sales call, each awkward encounter with a reluctant prospect. In the early going, we’re struck by the refreshingly honest and fairly astonishing footage as we take in this unrehearsed, unscripted record of high pressure tactics used by representatives of the Mid-American Bible Company. We get a rare opportunity to view the...

Mubi is exclusively showing two new, brilliant and unconventional films from Spain: Luis López Carrasco's El Futuro (April 11 - May 10) and Ion de Sosa's Androids Dream (April 12 - May 11). We asked the two filmmakers—friends and collaborators—a few questions about their work. For an in-depth exploration of the two films, we recommend Michael Pattison's article, Back to the Future: Androids Dream and El Futuro.Spanish directors Ion de Sosa (front left) and Luis López Carrasco (back right).Notebook: How did you each manage to bring your projects to life?Luis LÓPEZ Carrasco: After living in Berlin for a few months through a scholarship program, I came back to Spain in 2010 fully energized with the aim to set up a production company, finance my own projects and support friends whose work I deeply admire. The international success of Los Hijos Collective led me to believe...

Above: Us poster for Salesman (Maysles Brothers & Charlotte Zwerin, USA, 1968). Designer: Henry Wolf. Courtesy of Film/Art Gallery.Starting today, Film Forum in New York is hosting The Maysles & Co., a comprehensive two-week long retrospective of the work of the legendary “Direct Cinema” documentarians Albert and David Maysles—best known for Gimme Shelter (1970) and Grey Gardens (1976)—and their various collaborators, most especially Charlotte Zwerin. Grey Gardens, a film whose title has entered the lingua franca, is the only documentary ever to be turned into a Tony-winning Broadway musical, an Emmy-winning TV dramatization, and an SNL-alumni parody, but its poster, a simple framing of a photograph by Herb Goro, doesn’t really do the film justice. Gimme Shelter, on the other hand—the Maysles’ biggest international success—has inspired a wide variety of designs. For me, the stand-out is the stark black and white one sheet with all-Helvetica type, the first one featured below.

Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.

NYC’s IFC Center has plans to expand, and they could use your help to let city officials know you support it.

Watch Don Cheadle analyze a scene from Miles Ahead:

Xavier Dolan‘s The Death and Life of John F. Donovan begins shooting on July 9th, Le Journal de Quebec reports.

Cinematographer Jeff Cutter discusses shooting 10 Cloverfield Lane with Filmmaker Magazine:

Anamorphic lenses just have a feeling that reminded Dan and I of what it used to be like watching these great widescreen movies when we were kids that were shot anamorphic. It just makes it feel like a big movie and that was something that we really,...

Totally and tragically unconventional, Peggy Guggenheim moved through the cultural upheaval of the 20th century collecting not only not only art, but artists. Her sexual life was -- and still today is -- more discussed than the art itself which she collected, not for her own consumption but for the world to enjoy.

Her colorful personal history included such figures as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp and countless others. Guggenheim helped introduce the world to Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko and scores of others now recognized as key masters of modernism.

In 1921 she moved to Paris and mingled with Picasso, Dali, Joyce, Pound, Stein, Leger, Kandinsky. In 1938 she opened a gallery in London and began showing Cocteau, Tanguy, Magritte, Miro, Brancusi, etc., and then back to Paris and New York after the Nazi invasion, followed by the opening of her NYC gallery Art of This Century, which became one of the premiere avant-garde spaces in the U.S. While fighting through personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo where she moved in 1947. Since 1951, her collection has become one of the world’s most visited art spaces.

Featuring: Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Vasil Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Fernand Leger, Rene Magritte, Man Ray, Jean Miro, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Kurt Schwitters, Gino Severini, Clyfford Still and Yves Tanguy.

Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Director and Producer)

Lisa Immordino Vreeland has been immersed in the world of fashion and art for the past 25 years. She started her career in fashion as the Director of Public Relations for Polo Ralph Lauren in Italy and quickly moved on to launch two fashion companies, Pratico, a sportswear line for women, and Mago, a cashmere knitwear collection of her own design. Her first book was accompanied by her directorial debut of the documentary of the same name, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012). The film about the editor of Harper's Bazaar had its European premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, going on to win the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and the fashion category for the Design of the Year awards, otherwise known as “The Oscars” of design—at the Design Museum in London.

"Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" is Lisa Immordino Vreeland's followup to her acclaimed debut, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel". She is now working on her third doc on Cecil Beaton who Lisa says, "has been circling around all these stories. What's great about him is the creativity: fashion photography, war photography, "My Fair Lady" winning an Oscar."

Sydney Levine: I have read numerous accounts and interviews with you about this film and rather than repeat all that has been said, I refer my readers to Indiewire's Women and Hollywood interview at Tribeca this year, and your Indiewire interview with Aubrey Page, November 6, 2015 .

Let's try to cover new territory here.

First of all, what about you? What is your relationship to Diana Vreeland?

Liv: I am married to her grandson, Alexander Vreeland. (I'm also proud of my name Immordino) I never met Diana but hearing so many family stories about her made me start to wonder about all the talk about her. I worked in fashion and lived in New York like she did.

Sl: In one of your interviews you said that Peggy was not only ahead of her time but she helped to define it. Can you tell me how?

Liv: Peggy grew up in a very traditional family of German Bavarian Jews who had moved to New York City in the 19th century. Already at a young age Peggy felt like there were too many rules around her and she wanted to break out. That alone was something attractive to me — the notion that she knew that she didn't fit in to her family or her times. She lived on her own terms, a very modern approach to life. She decided to abandon her family in New York. Though she always stayed connected to them, she rarely visited New York. Instead she lived in a world without borders. She did not live by "the rules". She believed in creating art and created herself, living on her own terms and not on those of her family.

Sl: Is there a link between her and your previous doc on Diana Vreeland?

Liv: The link between Vreeland and Guggenheim is their mutual sense of reinvention and transformation. That made something click inside of me as I too reinvented myself when I began writing the book on Diana Vreeland .

Can you talk about the process of putting this one together and how it differed from its predecessor?

Liv: The most challenging thing about this one was the vast amount of material we had at our disposal. We had a lot of media to go through — instead of fashion spreads, which informed The Eye Has To Travel, we had art, which was fantastic. I was spoiled by the access we had to these incredible archives and footage. I'm still new to this, but it's the storytelling aspect that I loved in both projects. One thing about Peggy that Mrs. Vreeland didn't have was a very tragic personal life. There was so much that happened in Peggy's life before you even got to what she actually accomplished. And so we had to tell a very dense story about her childhood, her father dying on the Titanic, her beloved sister dying — the tragic events that fundamentally shaped her in a way. It was about making sure we had enough of the personal story to go along with her later accomplishments.

World War II alone was such a huge part of her story, opening an important art gallery in London, where she showed Kandinsky and other important artists for the first time. The amount of material to distill was a tremendous challenge and I hope we made the right choices.

Sl: How did you learn make a documentary?

Liv: I learned how to make a documentary by having a good team around me. My editors (and co-writers)Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Frédéric Tcheng were very helpful.

Research is fundamental; finding as much as you can and never giving up. I love the research. It is my "precise time". Not just for interviews but of footage, photographs never seen before. It is a painstaking process that satisfies me. The research never ends. I was still researching while I was promoting the Diana Vreeland book. I love reading books and going to original sources.

The archives in film museums in the last ten years has changed and given museums a new role. I found unique footage at Moma with the Elizabeth Chapman Films. Chapman went to Paris in the 30s and 40s with a handheld camera and took moving pictures of Brancusi and Duchamps joking around in a studio, Gertrude Stein, Leger walking down the street. This footage is owned by Robert Storr, Dean of Yale School of Art. In fact he is taking a sabbatical this year to go through the boxes and boxes of Chapman's films. We also used " Entre'acte" by René Clair cowritten with Dadaist Francis Picabia, "Le Sang du poet" of Cocteau, Hans Richter "8x8","Gagascope" and " Dreams That Money Can Buy" produced by Peggy Guggenheim, written by Man Ray in 1947.

Sl: How long did it take to research and make the film?

Liv: It took three years for both the Vreeland and the Guggenheim documentary.

It was more difficult with the Guggenheim story because there was so much material and so much to tell of her life. And she was not so giving of her own self. Diana could inspire you about a bandaid; she was so giving. But Peggy didn't talk much about why she loved an artist or a painting. She acted more. And using historical material could become "over-teaching" though it was fascinating.

So much had to be eliminated. It was hard to eliminate the Degenerate Art Show, a subject which is newly discussed. Stephanie Barron of Lacma is an expert on Degenerate Art and was so generous.

Once we decided upon which aspects to focus on, then we could give focus to the interviews.

There were so many of her important shows we could not include. For instance there was a show on collages featuring William Baziotes , Jackson Pollack and Robert Motherwell which started a more modern collage trend in art. The 31 Women Art Show which we did include pushed forward another message which I think is important.

And so many different things have been written about Peggy — there were hundreds of articles written about her during her lifetime. She also kept beautiful scrapbooks of articles written about her, which are now in the archives of the Guggenheim Museum.

The Guggenheim foundation did not commission this documentary but they were very supportive and the film premiered there in New York in a wonderful celebration. They wanted to represent Peggy and her paintings properly. The paintings were secondary characters and all were carefully placed historically in a correct fashion.

Sl: You said in one interview Guggenheim became a central figure in the modern art movement?

Liv: Yes and she did it without ego. Sharing was always her purpose in collecting art. She was not out for herself. Before Peggy, the art world was very different. And today it is part of wealth management.

Other collectors had a different way with art. Isabelle Stewart Gardner bought art for her own personal consumption. The Gardner Museum came later. Gertrude Stein was sharing the vision of her brother when she began collecting art. The Coen sisters were not sharing.

Her benevolence ranged from giving Berenice Abbott the money to buy her first camera to keeping Pollock afloat during lean times.

Djuana Barnes, who had a 'Love Love Love Hate Hate Hate' relationship with Peggy wrote Nightwood in Peggy's country house in England.

She was in Paris to the last minute. She planned how to safeguard artwork from the Nazis during World War II. She was storing gasoline so she could escape. She lived on the Ile St. Louis with her art and moved the paintings out first to a children's boarding school and then to Marseilles where it was shipped out to New York City.

Her role in art was not taken seriously because of her very public love life which was described in very derogatory terms. There was more talk about her love life than about her collection of art.

Her autobiography, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict (1960) , was scandalous when it came out — and she didn't even use real names, she used pseudonyms for her numerous partners. Only after publication did she reveal the names of the men she slept with.

The fact that she spoke about her sexual life at all was the most outrageous aspect. She was opening herself up to ridicule, but she didn't care. Peggy was her own person and she felt good in her own skin. But it was definitely unconventional behavior. I think her sexual appetites revealed a lot about finding her own identity.

A lot of it was tied to the loss of her father, I think, in addition to her wanting to feel accepted. She was also very adventurous — look at the men she slept with. I mean, come on, they are amazing! Samuel Beckett, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, and she married Max Ernst. I think it was really ballsy of her to have been so open about her sexuality; this was not something people did back then. So many people are bound by conventional rules but Peggy said no. She grabbed hold of life and she lived it on her own terms.

Sl: You also give Peggy credit for changing the way art was exhibited. Can you explain that?

Liv: One of her greatest achievements was her gallery space in New York City, Art of This Century, which was unlike anything the art world has seen before or since in the way that it shattered the boundaries of the gallery space that we've come to know today — the sterile white cube. She came to be a genius at displaying her collections...

She was smart with Art of the Century because she hired Frederick Kiesler as a designer of the gallery and once again surrounded herself with the right people, including Howard Putzler, who was already involved with her at Guggenheim Jeune in London. And she was hanging out with all the exiled Surrealists who were living in New York at the time, including her future husband, Max Ernst, who was the real star of that group of artists. With the help of these people, she started showing art in a completely different way that was both informal and approachable. In conventional museums and galleries, art was untouchable on the wall and inside frames. In Peggy's gallery, art stuck out from the walls; works weren't confined to frames. Kiesler designed special chairs you could sit in and browse canvases as you would texts in a library. Nothing like this had ever existed in New York before — even today there is nothing like it.

She made the gallery into an exciting place where the whole concept of space was transformed. In Venice, the gallery space was also her home. Today, for a variety of reasons, the home aspect of the collection is less emphasized, though you still get a strong sense of Peggy's home life there. She was bringing art to the public in a bold new way, which I think is a great idea. It's art for everybody, which is very much a part of today's dialogue except that fewer people can afford the outlandish museum entry fees.

Sl: What do you think made her so prescient and attuned ?

Liv: She was smart enough to ask Marcel Duchamp to be her advisor — so she was in tune, and very well connected. She was on the cutting edge of what was going on and I think a lot of this had to do with Peggy being open to the idea of what was new and outrageous. You have to have a certain personality for this; what her childhood had dictated was totally opposite from what she became in life, and being in the right place at the right time helped her maintain a cutting edge throughout her life.

Sl: The movie is framed around a lost interview with Peggy conducted late in her life. How did you acquire these tapes?

Liv: We optioned Jacqueline Bogard Weld’s book, Peggy : The Wayward Guggenheim, the only authorized biography of Peggy, which was published after she died. Jackie had spent two summers interviewing Peggy but at a certain point lost the tapes somewhere in her Park Avenue apartment. Jackie had so much access to Peggy, which was incredible, but it was also the access that she had to other people who had known Peggy — she interviewed over 200 people for her book. Jackie was incredibly generous, letting me go through all her original research except for the lost tapes.

We'd walk into different rooms in her apartment and I'd suggestively open a closet door and ask “Where do you think those tapes might be?" Then one day I asked if she had a basement, and she did. So I went through all these boxes down there, organizing her affairs. Then bingo, the tapes showed up in this shoebox.

It was the longest interview Peggy had ever done and it became the framework for our movie. There's nothing more powerful than when you have someone's real voice telling the story, and Jackie was especially good at asking provoking questions. You can tell it was hard for Peggy to answer a lot of them, because she wasn't someone who was especially expressive; she didn't have a lot of emotion. And this comes across in the movie, in the tone of her voice.

Sl: Larry Gagosian has one of the best descriptions of Peggy in the movie — "she was her own creation." Would you agree, and if so why?

Liv: She was very much her own creation. When he said that in the interview I had a huge smile on my face. In Peggy's case it stemmed from a real need to identify and understand herself. I'm not sure she achieved it but she completely recreated herself — she knew that she did not want to be what she was brought up to be. She tried being a mother, but that was not one of her strengths, so art became that place where she could find herself, and then transform herself.

Nobody believed in the artists she cultivated and supported — they were outsiders and she was an outsider in the world she was brought up in. So it's in this way that she became her own great invention. I hope that her humor comes across in the film because she was extremely amusing — this aspect really comes across in her autobiography.

Sl: Finally, what do you think is Peggy Guggenheim's most lasting legacy, beyond her incredible art collection?

Liv: Her courage, and the way she used it to find herself. She had this ballsiness that not many people had, especially women. In her own way she was a feminist and it's good for women and young girls today to see women who stepped outside the confines of a very traditional family and made something of her life. Peggy's life did not seem that dreamy until she attached herself to these artists. It was her ability to redefine herself in the end that truly summed her up.

About the Filmmakers

Stanley Buchtal is a producer and entrepreneur. His movies credits include "Hairspray", "Spanking the Monkey", "Up at the Villa", "Lou Reed Berlin", "Love Marilyn", "LennoNYC", "Bobby Fischer Against the World", "Herb & Dorothy", "Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child", "Sketches of Frank Gehry", "Black White + Gray: a Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe", among numerous others.

David Koh is an independent producer, distributor, sales agent, programmer and curator. He has been involved in the distribution, sale, production, and financing of over 200 films. He is currently a partner in the boutique label Submarine Entertainment with Josh and Dan Braun and is also partners with Stanley Buchthal and his Dakota Group Ltd where he co-manages a portfolio of over 50 projects a year (75% docs and 25% fiction). Previously he was a partner and founder of Arthouse Films a boutique distribution imprint and ran Chris Blackwell's (founder of Island Records & Island Pictures) film label, Palm Pictures. He has worked as a Producer for artist Nam June Paik and worked in the curatorial departments of Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, Mfa Boston, and the Guggenheim Museum. David has recently served as a Curator for Microsoft and has curated an ongoing film series and salon with Andre Balazs Properties and serves as a Curator for the exclusive Core Club in NYC.

David recently launched with his partners Submarine Deluxe, a distribution imprint; Torpedo Pictures, a low budget high concept label; and Nfp Submarine Doks, a German distribution imprint with Nfp Films. Recently and upcoming projects include "Yayoi Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots", "Burden: a Portrait of Artist Chris Burden", "Dior and I", "20 Feet From Stardom", "Muscle Shoals", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Rats NYC", "Nas: Time Is Illmatic", "Blackfish", "Love Marilyn", "Chasing Ice", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Cutie and the Boxer"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: the Radiant Child", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Wolfpack, "Meru", and "Station to Station".

Dan Braun is a producer, writer, art director and musician/composer based in NYC. He is the Co-President of and Co-Founder of Submarine, a NYC film sales and production company specializing in independent feature and documentary films. Titles include "Blackfish", "Finding Vivian Maier", "Muscle Shoals", "The Case Against 8", "Keep On Keepin’ On", "Winter’s Bone", "Nas: Time is Illmatic", "Dior and I" and Oscar winning docs "Man on Wire", "Searching for Sugarman", "20 Ft From Stardom" and "Citizenfour". He was Executive Producer on documentaries "Kill Your Idols", (which won Best NY Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival 2004), "Blank City", "Sunshine Superman", the upcoming feature adaptations of "Batkid Begins" and "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" and the upcoming horror TV anthology "Creepy" to be directed by Chris Columbus.

He is a producer of the free jazz documentary "Fire Music", and the upcoming documentaries, "Burden" on artist Chris Burden and "Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots" on artist Yayoi Kusama. He is also a writer and consulting editor on Dark Horse Comic’s "Creepy" and "Eerie 9" comic book and archival series for which he won an Eisner Award for best archival comic book series in 2009.

He is a musician/composer whose compositions were featured in the films "I Melt With You" and "Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child and is an award winning art director/creative director when he worked at Tbwa/Chiat/Day on the famous Absolut Vodka campaign.

John Northrup (Co-Producer) began his career in documentaries as a French translator for National Geographic: Explorer. He quickly moved into editing and producing, serving as the Associate Producer on "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012), and editing and co-producing "Wilson In Situ" (2014), which tells the story of theatre legend Robert Wilson and his Watermill Center. Most recently, he oversaw the post-production of Jim Chambers’ "Onward Christian Soldier", a documentary about Olympic Bomber Eric Rudolph, and is shooting on Susanne Rostock’s "Another Night in the Free World", the follow-up to her award-winning "Sing Your Song" (2011).

Submarine Entertainment (Production Company) Submarine Entertainment is a hybrid sales, production, and distribution company based in N.Y. Recent and upcoming titles include "Citizenfour", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Dog", "Visitors", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Muscle Shoals", "Blackfish", "Cutie and the Boxer", "The Summit", "The Unknown Known", "Love Marilyn", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Chasing Ice", "Downtown 81 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Wild Style 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Good Ol Freda", "Some Velvet Morning", among numerous others. Submarine principals also represent Creepy and Eerie comic book library and are developing properties across film & TV platforms.

Submarine has also recently launched a domestic distribution imprint and label called Submarine Deluxe; a genre label called Torpedo Pictures; and a German imprint and label called Nfp Submarine Doks.

Bernadine Colish has edited a number of award-winning documentaries. "Herb and Dorothy" (2008), won Audience Awards at Silverdocs, Philadelphia and Hamptons Film Festivals, and "Body of War" (2007), was named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review. "A Touch of Greatness" (2004) aired on PBS Independent Lens and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Her career began at Maysles Films, where she worked with Charlotte Zwerin on such projects as "Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser", "Toru Takemitsu: Music for the Movies" and the PBS American Masters documentary, "Ella Fitzgerald: Something To Live For". Additional credits include "Bringing Tibet Home", "Band of Sisters", "Rise and Dream", "The Tiger Next Door", "The Buffalo War" and "Absolute Wilson".

Jed Parker (Editor) Jed Parker began his career in feature films before moving into documentaries through his work with the award-winning American Masters series. Credits include "Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart", "Annie Liebovitz: Life Through a Lens", and most recently "Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides".

Other work includes two episodes of the PBS series "Make ‘Em Laugh", hosted by Billy Crystal, as well as a documentary on Met Curator Henry Geldzahler entitled "Who Gets to Call it Art"?

Credits

Director, Writer, Producer: Lisa Immordino Vreeland

Produced by Stanley Buchthal, David Koh and Dan Braun Stanley Buchthal (producer)

Maja Hoffmann (executive producer)

Josh Braun (executive producer)

Bob Benton (executive producer)

John Northrup (co-producer)

Bernadine Colish (editor)

Jed Parker (editor)

Peter Trilling (director of photography)

Bonnie Greenberg (executive music producer)

Music by J. Ralph

Original Song "Once Again" Written and Performed By J. Ralph

Interviews Featuring Artist Marina Abramović Jean Arp Dore Ashton Samuel Beckett Stephanie Barron Constantin Brâncuși Diego Cortez Alexander Calder Susan Davidson Joseph Cornell Robert De Niro Salvador Dalí Simon de Pury Willem de Kooning Jeffrey Deitch Marcel Duchamp Polly Devlin Max Ernst Larry Gagosian Alberto Giacometti Arne Glimcher Vasily Kandinsky Michael Govan Fernand Léger Nicky Haslam Joan Miró Pepe Karmel Piet Mondrian Donald Kuspit Robert Motherwell Dominique Lévy Jackson Pollock Carlo McCormick Mark Rothko Hans Ulrich Obrist Yves Tanguy Lisa Phillips Lindsay Pollock Francine Prose John Richardson Sandy Rower Mercedes Ruehl Jane Rylands Philip Rylands Calvin Tomkins Karole Vail Jacqueline Bograd Weld Edmund White

Running time: 97 minutes

U.S. distribution by Submarine Deluxe

International sales by Hanway...

With the passing of seminal documentarian Albert Maysles on March 5, it would only be appropriate to speak to Susan Froemke, his long time friend and frequent co-director. Albert Maysles –along with his brother David - made some of the most iconic American documentaries of all time, all the while revolutionizing the art form, largely through the utilization of cinema verite or direct cinema. This documentary motif, which grew popular by the Maysles and their contemporaries like D.A. Pennebaker and Richard Leacock, actually had been invented by Jean Rouch and originally inspired by Dziga Vertov’s theory about Kino Pravda nearly a century ago.

Cinema verite is sometimes called observational cinema, but that does not entirely explain its phenomenon; the style is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera’s presence. One can feel the visceral and –at times- spontaneous reactions by its performers. (Take for instance Mick Jagger’s despair upon seeing footage of one of his fans killed at the Altamont Free Concert by a member of the Hells Angels in "Gimme Shelter").

The Maysles’ brothers were co-directors of acclaimed films such as the aforementioned "Gimme Shelter," "Grey Gardens" and "Salesman." They continued to make cinema verite documentaries together for thirty years until David’s death in 1987. They chronicled Hollywood luminaries like Orson Welles and Marlon Brando, and also chronicled the Beatles’ first visit to the U.S. Their range was vast and eclectic. They were nominated for a Best Documentary, Short Subjects Academy Award in 1974 for "Christo’s Valley Curtain." Afterward, Albert Maysles would co-direct with Deborah Dickson and Susan Froemke, and would go on to win an Emmy in 1992 for "Abortion: Desperate Choices." Up until his death, Albert continued making films on his own and in collaboration with other filmmakers for HBO and others. The collaboration between Albert Maysles and Susan Froemke had been just as impressive. Such films as "Vladimir Horowitz: The Last Romantic" and "Ozawa" are part of their canon. Perhaps their most prominent collaboration (along with Deborah Dickson) was the 2001 Oscar nominated "Lalee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton," which followed a Mississippi Delta school district and a struggling Delta family. The film reflected the damaging effects of poverty in the Deep South.

In this Exclusive interview, Susan Froemke discusses Albert Maysles’ brilliance as co-director, collaborator, his integral place within cinematic history as well as generous artistic spirit.

Jared Feldschreiber: What were the circumstances in which you met Albert Maysles as film artists? Since you both collaborated on close to twenty films, how would you characterize your relationship both artistically and on a personal basis?

Susan Froemke: I arrived at Maysles Films in the early 70’s, 21 years old, and worked with Al and David until 2003. The Maysles shied away from hiring people right out of film schools because they wanted you to be open to their approach. They didn’t want to “un-teach you”—their word. I was an English Lit major which pleased them. I was privileged to be one of the few allowed to be on shoots with them (Bob Richman was too) so I saw their filming approach first hand. I worked very closely with David, Charlotte Zwerin and Ellen Hovde in the edit room. I eventually produced for them.

Jf: How would you describe your collaborative process?

Sf: When David died in 1987, Al and I partnered as a filming team--Al on camera while I took sound. A two person filming crew—no larger-- was essential to capturing the intimate footage we loved. Maysles Films was very much a family and it lasted for over 40 years. Everyone who worked there, and many talented filmmakers came through the company, felt the spirit of the place and we were all committed to the Maysles’ approach and very close personally.

We’d find a subject we thought was worthy of filming, follow the direction that subject took us on and then edit the footage all as a team. Our end credits were “a film by” and that was the true working relationship. Everyone had an equal voice. We are all so sad today.

Jf: In a TV interview, Albert disclosed a telling adage by Orson Welles, which seemed to fit his approach to documentaries: ‘In a fiction film, the director is God, in a non-fiction film, God is the director,' Albert cited Welles. Would you say that this was Albert’s modus operandi, and if so, would you say as a documentarian he remained resolute to never ‘prejudge’ his subjects and let the events on camera determine the film’s focus?

Sf: Oh yes, I heard that quote often from Al. Al and David (and I have to always include David as well because they developed their approach—their philosophy—together) took their direction from their subject. The only thing we asked from a subject was access. Al and David never told a subject what to do, never asked them to repeat an action or sentence. They never talked to the subject while filming. Never. They wanted to minimize the fact that filming was going on. They wanted to keep the true-life situation as real as possible. But this was Not fly on the wall filming. They hated being called that because there was always a deep bond between filmmaker and subject. A deep trust. Wherever the subject took us always produced the strongest footage. And reality never disappointed us.

Jf: Do you know who were Albert’s main film inspirations?

Sf: I don’t think Al ever saw any films except his own. He didn’t really go to the movies. Certainly not fiction films! He was inspired by the people he met on a train; or walking down the street, if he saw someone sad, he’d ask them why; faces in the crowd, this is what interested him. I do know that he did admire Henri Cartier–Bresson’s photographs.

Jf: In layman’s terms, what’s the value of cinema verite? How can one define it? Do you feel as though the modern sensibility is patient enough to deal with its approach? Was this ever a concern for you and Albert over time that you may lose your audience?

Sf: Al was never interested in any approach to filmmaking but “direct cinema” which we defined as the truth that unfolded before our camera. This is a timeless approach, one that allowed us to examine the human spirit. I think it will last through the ages, like great literature. It never occurred to us to worry about losing an audience. If you have a complex narrative with charismatic characters, your film will always find viewership.

Jf: How many films did you work on with Albert, and which ones were your favorites in terms of content, their form and other personal collaborative memories?

Sf: I made over 20 films with Al. Favorites include "Grey Gardens", "Vladimir Horowitz: The Last Romantic," "Lalee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton," "Soldiers Of Music: Rostropovich Returns to Russia." There are so many. The trip to Russia in the early 90’s with Al to film Rostropovich’s return to Russia after 16 years of exile was a magnificent trip. Al had a tremendously nostalgic feeling towards Russia because he and David had taken a motorcycle trip there in the 50’s and began filming then. We traveled with Rostropovich and his family for a week and each encounter they had—whether musical or political-- was profound so we came back with rich, beautiful footage that told a story of courage and bravery. Al’s intuitive, lyrical camera was stunning whether filming Rostropovich playing the cello or just faces of strangers in a crowd.

Jf: In which scenes in the films you worked on together would you say you achieved a kind of ‘cinema truth?’

Sf: There is a scene in "Lalee’s Kin" which was filmed in the Mississippi Delta’s poorest county where Lalee, a 60 year old Great Grandmother, realizes her 12 year old granddaughter hasn’t made it to school on the first day of classes because she didn’t have any pencils or paper to take with her. The granddaughter is softly crying as Lalee searches through her house trying to find some pencils. This is a child who wants to be educated but painfully knows the odds aren’t in her favor. It’s a heartbreaking scene that illuminates the scale of the problems of poverty—how difficult it is to educate the child from an illiterate family. It is ‘cinema truth’ at it’s best.

Albert Maysles’ documentary film career began in 1955 when he traveled abroad to shoot "Psychiatry in Russia." He made films until his death, as exemplified by his latest “In Transit," which is due to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. The film centers on the Empire Builder - America’s busiest long-distance train route that runs from Chicago to Seattle. "Iris," another documentary of the fashion icon Iris Apfel, will also be released next month.

Albert Maysles, the documentarian behind such groundbreaking films as Grey Gardens and The Rolling Stones documentary Gimme Shelter, died Thursday evening. This morning, The Criterion Collection announced his passing via their Facebook page. He was 88.

Maysles innovated the “fly on the wall” style of filmmaking, and his films from Salesman to Grey Gardens to Gimme Shelter, along with his brother David and directing partner Charlotte Zwerin, were all included on Sight & Sound’s critics poll of the Top 50 documentaries ever made. Grey Gardens also just this week received a restoration for its 40th anniversary as part of the Criterion Collection.

Maysles even found himself at a pivotal moment in history, documenting the arrival of The Beatles to America. He also worked as a cinematographer on the Oscar winning documentary When We Were Kings about Muhammed Ali and was nominated himself for an Oscar with his short subject documentary Christo’s Valley Curtain.

Michael Moore at First Time Fest Stand Alone: "And the other film I saw at that time was a film made with Barbie Dolls. It's called Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Michael Moore in a seated Stand Alone with Director of Programming David Schwartz discussed how he got into filmmaking through his immersion in the cinema of Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, François Truffaut, Federico Fellini and sneaking in to see Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.

David Schwartz to Michael Moore: "And Kubrick? You said Clockwork Orange was a favorite." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

This year's First Time Fest First Exposure series includes Julie Taymor's Titus, starring Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming - Salesman directed by Charlotte Zwerin, Albert and David Maysles - James Toback's Fingers starring Harvey Keitel - David Lynch's Eraserhead with Dp Frederick Elmes in person - Kelly Reichardt's River Of Grass...

The focus of Gimme Shelter is, of course, the Altamont concert, but what have lingered with me are the film's smaller, closer sadnesses

It had been a while since I had seen Gimme Shelter, the 1970 documentary directed by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin that follows the Rolling Stones' 1969 Us tour, from Madison Square Garden through hotel rooms and photo shoots, attorneys' offices and recording studios, culminating in the ill-fated Altamont Free Concert in northern California. Along the way there are donkeys, hippies, Hell's Angels and Uncle Sam hats, and a man with a revolver, stabbed as he attempts to invade the stage.

I found it startling this time. This was perhaps because lately most of the music documentaries I have seen have been cleaner, more conventional affairs – John Scheinfeld's excellent Harry Nilsson: The Missing Beatle, for instance, which interviewed the songwriter's family, friends and associates, and drew on archive footage,...

I think it’s safe to assume that we all love what Criterion is putting out these days, especially those deemed worthy to receive a high definition release on Blu-ray. It’s a given that we also love spreading the good word of Criterion, being that we went so far as to start a podcast and website, to keep the discussion of quality home video releases alive and well.

We also love using our Disc 2 episodes to feature other DVD’s and Blu-ray’s that we find exceptional, and over the past year there have certainly been a lot to talk about.

The fine folks over at Home Media Magazine have unveiled their annual HD Awards, and they want you to weigh in on the best Blu-ray releases from the past year. While I’m sure we’d all like to see that list completely full of discs from the Criterion Collection,...

To celebrate May 1st, otherwise known as May Day, also known as International Workers Day, I decided to round up 5 films from the Criterion Collection that you should all watch.

Class struggle and tension are found throughout the entire Criterion Collection, as they are filmmaking devices that we all relate to, whichever side we may fall on. From striking coal miners to door-to-door salesmen, the life of the lowly worker is often more compelling than the upper class, or royalty with their luxuries and quite petty inconveniences. The lower class are constantly working for their very survival, while at the same time finding great satisfaction in the little things in life.

Below you’ll find links and trailers to 5 films in the Criterion Collection that present the working class, so take the day off work, crack open a beer, and watch a great movie.

Add Days of Heven to your Netflix Queue.

Chicago – If the 1969 U.S. tour of The Rolling Stones had gone smoothly, David Maysles, Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin’s “Gimme Shelter” would still be one of the best music documentaries ever made. Of course, as everyone who knows anything about music or pop culture history knows, the tour did not go smoothly, ending in the infamous concert at Altamont Speedway that’s often pointed to as the end of the era of love.

The Criterion Collection, continuing a pattern of releasing their music documentaries on Blu-Ray before other selections, brings this riveting document of the end of an era through a band in its prime to the world of HD.

Blu-Ray Rating: 4.0/5.0

“Gimme Shelter” opens with a photo shoot and one of the best live performances of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” ever put on film (and probably ever recorded). Clearly, this is a band at the top of the rock ‘n’ roll game.

I have yet to see Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones concert doc Shine a Light despite owning the Blu-ray. I simply have no real interest in seeing it. So, when I received Criterion's Blu-ray edition of their 2000 release Gimme Shelter there wasn't any rush to give it a watch, but regardless of musical tastes this is more of a documentary than it is a musical concert event.

This is a moment captured in time as the Rolling Stones (along with the likes of Santana, Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills and Nash) set out to put on a free concert in San Francisco when the decision to incorporate the Hells Angels as part of concert security over approximately 300,000 people at San Francisco's Altamont Speedway results in mass hysteria. Four births and four deaths are contributed to the evening, and one of the attacks is caught on camera as a knife-weilding Hells...

Jay Cheel of The Documentary Blog gives us his top five documentary recommendations.

1. Salesman (1969) – Directors: David Maysles, Albert Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin

The Maysles Brothers are considered by many to be pioneers in the Cinema Verite movement, or as they prefer to say…their own ’Direct Cinema’ style. Saleman is a prime example of their knack at remaining almost completely un-intrusive while still capturing beautiful images and honest moments. The film follows a small group of Boston bible salesman as they try to meet their quotas by any means necessary. When the main subject, Paul ‘The Badger’ Brennan starts to lose his touch, he struggles to remain on top of his sales while sharing stories on the road with his salesmen buddies.

Also check out: John Landis’ Slasher. A documentary about a rambunctious used car salesmen.

2. Grizzly Man (2005) - Director: Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog’s ‘Grizzly Man’ compiles recorded video of...

By Matt Singer

In honor of their 40 years on movie screens, from 1968's "Sympathy for the Devil" to last week's release of "Shine a Light," we're taking a look at The Rolling Stones' filmography, featuring enough collaborations with great directors to make any actor jealous and enough abandoned or aborted projects to give any movie investor heartburn.

Gimme Shelter (1970)

Directed by Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin

The Film: The Rolling Stones watch the events of their recent American tour as they play out before them on a flatbed editing machine. Though their return to the States was filled with plenty of highlights, including a triumphant series of concerts at Madison Square Garden and a successful recording session at Muscle Shoals Studios, all that really seems to matter is the disastrous result of their free concert held outside of San Francisco at the Altamont Speedway. Intended as a companion...

• With the forthcoming releases of Control and I'm Not There - the folks over at Time Out (London) brought their collective of film and music critics together to chart the top films pertaining to music legend. The Top 50 list manages to make no mention of a recent Hollywood-ized bio-tales of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash (thank you!) and from the chunk of films that I have seen the positioning seems a propos. Todd Haynes' who has his Dylan creation coming out soon tops this list with one of my favorite films from the helmer in Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story. Personally I would have found space another Da Pennebaker film in Depeche Mode 101 and Grant Gee's Meeting People is Easy - a brilliant Radiohead doc. Here's the top 50 list -1 Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes, 1987)2 Don't Look Back (Da Pennebaker, 1967)3 Gimme Shelter (David Maysles/Albert Maysles/Charlotte Zwerin,

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