PETEY AND JOHNNY

Richard Leacock is one of the most important documentary filmmakers ever, because he understood, profoundly, the implications of his materiel and sought to expand the range of the medium by shooting in synchronous sound at a time when such a thing was not done. He got his start as a teenager, filming a documentary at his family’s farm on the Canary Islands, which got him hired by Robert Flaherty to assist on Louisiana Story. His inspired use of direct sound resulted, very quickly, in a batch of documentaries that felt like no others, in their immediacy and their seeming penetration of the inner life of public figures. His documentaries Primary and Crisis (made with Robert Drew and others) reveal the intimate world of politics in a way that presages the modern world of instant and constant video, but do so with an analytical grip on the material that’s as steady as it is unobtrusive. (Richard Brody, March 23, 2011)

This film is part of the program Films by Richard Leacock.