David Maysles (4)

Albert and David Maysles

Albert (November 26, 1926 – March 5, 2015) and his brother David (January 10, 1931 – January 3, 1987) Maysles (pronounced /ˈmeɪzɛlz/ may-zɛlz) were an American documentary filmmaking team known for their work in the direct cinema style. Their best-known films include Salesman (1969), Gimme Shelter (1970) and Grey Gardens (1976).

Biography

Early lives

The brothers were born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, living there until the family moved to Brookline, Massachusetts when Albert was 13. Albert and David's parents, both Jewish, were immigrants to the United States; their father, born in Ukraine, was employed as a postal clerk, while their mother, originally from Poland, was a schoolteacher. The family originally settled in Dorchester to be near relatives (the brothers' great-uncle Josef Maysles and his daughter and son-in-law, Becky and Joe Kandib) who had moved there earlier.

Albert originally pursued a career as a psychology professor and researcher. After serving in World War II, Albert obtained a BA from Syracuse University and MA in psychology from Boston University. He taught psychology at Boston University for three years, also working as a research assistant at a mental hospital and as head of a research project at Massachusetts General Hospital. As an outgrowth of his research work, he traveled to Russia to photograph a mental hospital, and returned the following year with a camera provided by CBS to film his first documentary, Psychiatry in Russia (1955). Although CBS did not air the film, it was televised on NBC, on the public broadcasting station WGBH-TV in Boston, and on Canadian network television.

David also studied psychology at Boston University, receiving a BA. He served in the U.S. Army in West Germany. In the mid-1950s, he worked as a Hollywood production assistant on the Marilyn Monroe films Bus Stop and The Prince and the Showgirl. David later stated that he grew "disenchanted with conventional filming. The glamour had faded and the filming of take after take had become tedious." By 1957 he had teamed up with Albert to shoot two documentaries behind the Iron Curtain, Russian Close-Up (credited to Albert Maysles alone) and Youth in Poland, the latter of which was broadcast on NBC.

By 1960, the Maysles brothers had joined Drew Associates, the documentary film company founded by photojournalist Robert Drew which also included Richard Leacock and D. A. Pennebaker. Albert would film, while David would handle sound. During this time, the brothers worked on Drew Associates films such as Primary and Adventures on the New Frontier. In 1962, Albert and David left Drew Associates to form their own production company, Maysles Films, Inc.

Death of David Maysles

David Maysles, the younger brother, died of a stroke on January 3, 1987, aged 55, in New York City. Following his death, Albert was involved in litigation with David's widow over the terms of a financial settlement. According to David's daughter Celia Maysles, this resulted in the family developing a "code of silence" regarding David. In 2007, Celia released a documentary about her father, Wild Blue Yonder, which included interviews with Albert.

Later life and death of Albert Maysles

After his brother's death, Albert Maysles continued to make films. His notable works include LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton (2001, co-directed with Deborah Dickson and Susan Froemke), which focused on the struggles of a poor African-American family living in the contemporary Mississippi Delta, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; and The Love We Make (2011, co-directed with Bradley Kaplan) which documented Paul McCartney's experiences in New York City following the September 11, 2001 attacks, and premiered on Showtime on September 10, 2011, the eve of the tenth anniversary of the attacks.

Albert continued the series of documentaries begun with David about the public art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. He also contributed cinematography to Leon Gast's Academy Award-winning documentary When We Were Kings, about the "Rumble in the Jungle" Muhammad Ali – George Foreman heavyweight championship boxing match. In 2005, Albert founded the Maysles Documentary Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the exhibition and production of documentary films that inspire dialogue and action, located in Harlem.

Albert died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Manhattan on March 5, 2015, aged 88. His films Iris, about fashion icon Iris Apfel, and In Transit, about the longest train route in the United States, were released posthumously later that year. At the time of his death, Albert had also been working on an autobiographical documentary entitled Handheld and From the Heart.

Legacy and contribution to documentary cinema

By letting real-life action unfold on camera without interference from the crew, the Maysles pioneered the "fly on the wall" perspective in documentary cinema. They broke tradition with mid-century documentary tropes by eschewing narration, inter-titles and extraneous music tracks. The editing process could be interpreted as their narrative "voice," depending on what footage and sound they chose to use and how the timeline of the story unfolded in the final cut.

Their success from a technical aspect was based in part on separating the camera from the sound recording device (David used a Nagra) by accurately controlling the speed of the camera and the tape recorder, allowing the two devices to be moved independently with respect to each other, an impossibility in commercially available equipment at the time. Long takes with ordinary equipment of the era would invariably lose synchronization.

Albert built his own 16mm camera with existing parts that could be comfortably balanced on his shoulder, eliminating the need for a tripod, allowing him to shoot fluidly in the moment. He added a brace so he could hold the camera steady during long takes. He installed a mirror near the lens and a ring on the focus-pull and could then set the aperture and focus while the camera rolled, ensuring continuity during a take.

Albert claimed to have a form of attention deficit disorder that made the leisurely pace of editing difficult for him but benefited him while shooting. Stating that his in-the-moment ability to focus let him, "Zero in on a situation as it's happening [with his camera] and pay much closer attention and somehow anticipate what's going to happen the next moment, be ready for it and get it, the way people with normal attention spans are incapable of doing."

The Maysles brothers' films Salesman and Grey Gardens have been preserved in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry as being culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. In May 2002, Ralph Blumenthal in The New York Times referred to Albert as "the dean of documentary film making" and Jean-Luc Godard once called Albert "the best American cameraman". The moving image collection of Albert and David Maysles is held at the Academy Film Archive.wiki

Info en Español → albertydavidmaysles.blogspot.com

(en la foto: Albert (izquierda) y David Maysles.)

Director (21 credits)
2006 The Beales of Grey Gardens (Documentary)
1991 The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit (Video documentary)
1990 Christo in Paris (Documentary)
1987 Islands (TV Movie documentary)
1985 Vladimir Horowitz: The Last Romantic (TV Movie documentary)
1985 Ozawa (TV Movie documentary)
1980 Muhammad and Larry (Documentary short)
1977 Running Fence (Documentary)
1976 Six American Families (TV Movie) (segment ": "The Burks of Georgia")
1975 Grey Gardens (Documentary)
1974 Christo's Valley Curtain (Documentary short) (as The Maysles Brothers)
1970 Gimme Shelter (Documentary)
1969 Salesman (Documentary)
1968 Journey to Jerusalem (Documentary)
1966 A Visit with Truman Capote (Documentary short)
1966 Meet Marlon Brando (Documentary short)
1966 Orson Welles in Spain (Documentary short)
1965 Cut Piece (Documentary short)
1964 The Delegate (TV Movie documentary)
1964 What's Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. (TV Movie documentary)
1963 Showman (Documentary)
IMDB

Enlaces completados:
Gimme Shelter (VV. DD., 1970)
Grey Gardens (VV. DD., 1975)
The Beales of Grey Gardens (Albert Maysles & David Maysles, 2006)
Salesman (VV.DD., 1968)

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