Cinema Verité
18 Episodes
In the 1960s, filmmakers on both sides of the Atlantic spilled into the streets in search of cinematic truth, armed with lightweight cameras that allowed for an unprecedented level of intimacy and liberated documentary from the conventions of voice-over narration and talking-head interviews. Today the term cinema verité (“cinema of truth”) is used as a catchall for both the philosophical and ethnographic inquiries of Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin—who coined the term—and the Direct Cinema movement in the U.S., which revolutionized and popularized the documentary form by attempting to capture, with startling immediacy, the truth of everyday life, often finding it in the era’s churning counterculture. This program features defining works by Rouch and Morin (CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER), D. A. Pennebaker (DONT LOOK BACK), the Maysles brothers (SALESMAN), and Barbara Kopple (HARLAN COUNTY USA) that display the myriad contrasting methods these filmmakers employed to capture truth on film.
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01:02Episode 1
Cinema Verité Teaser
Episode 1
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Primary
Episode 2
Directed by Robert Drew • 1960 • United States
Robert Drew’s groundbreaking 1960 film PRIMARY is one of the most important and influential documentaries in the history of the medium. A pioneering work in the documentary movement that came to be known as cinéma vérité, PRIMARY follows the young c...
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1:30:47Episode 3
Chronicle of a Summer
Episode 3
Directed by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin • 1961 • France
Few films can claim as much influence on the course of cinema history as CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER. The fascinating result of a collaboration between filmmaker-anthropologist Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin, this vanguard work of what Mor...
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Crisis
Episode 4
Directed by Robert Drew • 1963 • United States
CRISIS: BEHIND A PRESIDENTIAL COMMITMENT provided filmmaker Robert Drew, his crew and his audience the rare opportunity to watch a President of the United States deal with a national crisis. In this case, the crisis of the title was the attempted in...
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1:36:13Episode 5
Dont Look Back
Episode 5
Directed by D. A. Pennebaker • 1967 • United States
Bob Dylan is captured on-screen as he never would be again in this groundbreaking film from D. A. Pennebaker. The legendary documentarian finds Dylan in England during his 1965 tour, which would be his last as an acoustic artist. In this wildly...
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1:47:36Episode 6
Portrait of Jason
Episode 6
Directed by Shirley Clarke • 1967 • United States
Starring Jason HollidayOn the night of December 2, 1966, Shirley Clarke and a tiny crew convened in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea to make a film. For twelve straight hours, they filmed the one-and-only Jason Holliday as he spun tales, sang,...
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1:40:54Episode 7
Warrendale
Episode 7
Directed by Allan King • 1967 • Canada
For his enthralling first feature, Allan King took his cameras to a home for emotionally disturbed young people. Situated inside the facility like a fly on the wall, we witness the full spectrum of emotions displayed by twelve fascinating children and the...
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1:19:26Episode 8
Monterey Pop
Episode 8
Directed by D. A. Pennebaker • 1968 • United States
On a beautiful June weekend in 1967, at the beginning of the Summer of Love, the Monterey International Pop Festival roared forward, capturing a decade’s spirit and ushering in a new era of rock and roll. Monterey featured career-making perform...
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Salesman
Episode 9
Directed by David Maysles, Albert Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin • 1969 • United States
This radically influential portrait of American dreams and disillusionment from Direct Cinema pioneers David Maysles, Albert Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin captures, with indelible humanity, the worlds of four ...
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1:31:42Episode 10
Gimme Shelter
Episode 10
Directed by David Maysles, Albert Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin • 1970 • United States
Called the greatest rock film ever made, this landmark documentary follows the Rolling Stones on their notorious 1969 U.S. tour. When three hundred thousand members of the Love Generation collided with a few d...
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1:30:08Episode 11
A Poem Is a Naked Person
Episode 11
Directed by Les Blank • 1974 • United States
Les Blank considered this free-form feature documentary about beloved singer-songwriter Leon Russell, filmed between 1972 and 1974, to be one of his greatest accomplishments. Yet it has not been released until now. Hired by Russell to film him at his ...
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1:35:20Episode 12
Grey Gardens
Episode 12
Directed by David Maysles, Albert Maysles, Ellen Hovde, and Muffie Meyer • 1976 • United States
Meet Big and Little Edie Beale: mother and daughter, high-society dropouts, and reclusive cousins of Jackie Onassis. The two manage to thrive together amid the decay and disorder of their East Hampton...
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1:44:42Episode 13
Harlan County USA
Episode 13
Directed by Barbara Kopple • 1976 • United States
Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award-winning HARLAN COUNTY USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners’ strike in a small Kentucky town. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners’ sometimes violent struggles with strikeb...
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57:19Episode 14
Running Fence
Episode 14
Directed by Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin • 1977 • United States
RUNNING 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. ...
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57:35Episode 15
Always for Pleasure
Episode 15
Directed by Les Blank • 1978 • United States
his 1978 documentary is Les Blank’s celebration of the spirit and social traditions of New Orleans, featuring Mardi Gras and St. Patrick’s Day celebrations as well as musical performances by Allen Toussaint, Kid Thomas Valentine, Professor Longhair, a...
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1:34:59Episode 16
Burden of Dreams
Episode 16
Directed by Les Blank • 1982 • United States
For nearly five years, acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog desperately tried to complete one of the most ambitious and difficult films of his career, FITZCARRALDO, the story of one man’s attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. ...
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1:36:01Episode 17
The War Room
Episode 17
Directed by Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker • 1993 • United States
The 1992 presidential election was a triumph not only for Bill Clinton but also for the new breed of strategists who guided him to the White House—and changed the face of politics in the process. For this thrilling, behind-clo...
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1:24:47Episode 18
Kings of Pastry
Episode 18
Directed by D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus • 2009 • United States
For French pastry chefs, the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France (Best Craftsmen in France) is nothing less than the Olympics of their trade: an intense three-day competition in which a selection of the country’s finest pâtissiers tu...