Richard Leacock

Richard Leacock

Richard Leacock (July 18, 1921 – March 15, 2011) was a pioneering American-born filmmaker, widely regarded as one of the founding figures of the cinéma vérité movement. He was a key influence on the development of observational documentary filmmaking, known for his innovative use of handheld cameras and his emphasis on capturing spontaneous, real-time events. Leacock's most notable works include Primary (1960), which followed John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey during the 1960 Democratic primary campaign, and Chronicle of a Summer (1961), co-directed with Jean Rouch, a landmark film in the cinéma vérité genre. Throughout his career, Leacock collaborated with other influential filmmakers, including Robert Drew and D.A. Pennebaker, and helped shape the way documentaries were made. His legacy continues to influence contemporary documentary filmmakers.

  • Title: Richard Leacock
  • Popularity: 0.7137
  • Known For: Directing
  • Birthday: 1921-07-18
  • Place of Birth: London, UK
  • Homepage:
  • Also Known As: Ричард Ликок
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Richard Leacock Movies

  • 2023
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    Monica in the South Seas

    Monica in the South Seas

    1 2023 HD

    Finnish filmmaker and artist Sami van Ingen is a great-grandson of documentary pioneer Robert Flaherty, and seemingly the sole member of the family with a hands-on interest in continuing the directing legacy. Among the materials he found in the estate of Robert and Frances Flaherty’s daughter Monica were the film reels and video tapes detailing several years of work on realising her lifelong dream project: a sound version of her parents’ 1926 docu-fiction axiom, Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age.

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  • 1992
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    Cinéma! Cinéma! The French New Wave

    Cinéma! Cinéma! The French New Wave

    3.3 1992 HD

    An intimate window into one of the great movements in film history that brought about an evolution in the art of cinema. The documentary portrays the movement with insight on the lives and works of Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and other principal players in the New Wave.

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  • 2011
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    Mario Ruspoli, Prince of the Whales

    Mario Ruspoli, Prince of the Whales

    1 2011 HD

    Colleagues, friends and specialists pay tribute to the filmmaker Mario Ruspoli in a portrait that mixes encounters, archive images and film excerpts. With testimonies from Richard Leacock, Albert Maysles, Edgar Morin, D.A. Pennebaker and others.

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  • 2010
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    A Boatload of Wild Irishmen

    A Boatload of Wild Irishmen

    1 2010 HD

    Robert Flaherty is credited with being the father of the modern documentary after making "Nanook of the North" and classics such as "Man of Aran" and "Louisiana Story", but he is also criticized for engaging in distortion and stereotyping.

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  • 2000
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    The Last Documentary

    The Last Documentary

    1 2000 HD

    Documentary by Jan Sebening and Daniel Sponsel.

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  • 2012
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    Ricky on Leacock

    Ricky on Leacock

    1 2012 HD

    A 38-year journey that the director began in 1972 as a young filmmaker and, shooting off and throughout many years, the director filmed many and various encounters between Ricky, his friends and contemporaries including Henri Langlois, Jean Rouch, Jean-Luc Godard, DA Pennebaker, Robert Drew, and others. Mixing her own footage with film clips and rare images from Leacock's personal film archives, this film pays homage to the director's mentor and, most importantly, allows him to tell us the story of his long film making career in his own words.

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  • 2008
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    Morris Engel: The Independent

    Morris Engel: The Independent

    1 2008 HD

    Short documentary on the life and work of photographer and filmmaker Morris Engel

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  • 1989
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    Message to Man

    Message to Man

    1 1989 HD

    In January 1989 the first Message to Man International Film Festival took place in Leningrad. This film, made during the festival, is a record of its events, guests and participants, such as the American director Leo Hurwitz, the Latvian director Ivars Seleckis, and the ballerina Natalya Makarova, among others. It also shows the “engine room” of the festival: the work of the main office and the PROKKa professional cinematographers’ club, guests being greeted and seen off. A charity evening with Natalya Makarova, a memorial service to commemorate the victims of the war and excerpts of documentary films presented at the festival are also featured.

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  • 1971
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    1 P.M.

    1 P.M.

    5.8 1971 HD

    Lighter and livelier than the films Jean-Luc Godard had made in France, his U.S. collaboration with Direct Cinema documentarian D. A. Pennebaker was meant to be One A.M., as in “one American movie”; but Godard quit the project and the U.S., where to his dismay he discovered that revolution wasn’t imminent, and Pennebaker edited Godard’s material, to which he and Richard Leacock even added a bit more, releasing the result as One P.M., as in “one parallel movie.” It’s a stunning mixture of cinéma-vérité, political theater, and interviews of key sixties figures.

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  • 1984
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    Ein Film für Bossak und Leacock

    Ein Film für Bossak und Leacock

    1 1984 HD

    A portrait of the two documentary filmmakers Jerzy Bossak and Richard Leacock.

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  • 2016
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    Robert Drew & Associates at the Museum of Tolerance

    Robert Drew & Associates at the Museum of Tolerance

    8 2016 HD

    In 1998, documentary filmmaker Robert Drew and his associates attend the Museum of Tolerance.

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  • 1984
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    Lulu in Berlin

    Lulu in Berlin

    7 1984 HD

    Vérité documentarian Richard Leacock’s LULU IN BERLIN features one of the few long interviews ever done with actor Louise Brooks. It took place in her apartment in Rochester, New York, in 1971.

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  • 2014
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    How To Smell A Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock at his Farm in Normandy

    How To Smell A Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock at his Farm in Normandy

    4.75 2014 HD

    In the year 2000, Les Blank, along with co-filmmaker Gina Leibrecht, visited Richard Leacock (1921-2011) at his farm in Normandy, France and recorded conversations with him about his life, his work, and his other passion: cooking! With the flair of a seasoned raconteur, Leacock recounts key moments in his seventy years as a filmmaker and the innovations that he, D.A. Pennebaker, Albert Maysles and others invented that revolutionized documentary filmmaking, and explores the mystery of creativity. With the passing of both Blank and Leacock, the documentary is a moving insight into the lives of two seminal figures in the history of film.

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  • 1975
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    Solstice and Solyanka

    Solstice and Solyanka

    1 1975 HD

    Super 8 film. Observations of the Institute on Film, Video & Photography, Amherst, MA, summer 1975. Among the cast of characters, in order of appearance, are Robert Breer, John Terry, Steve Ascher, Richard Leacock, Jon Rubin, Frank Daniel, Ed Emshwiller, Ann McIntosh, Terry Lockhart, Standish Lawder, Jerome Liebling.

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  • 1987
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    Working Girls

    Working Girls

    6 1987 HD

    A lesbian college graduate, trying to bankroll her own photography business, works as a high-priced New York City escort.

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  • 1962
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    Nehru

    Nehru

    1 1962 HD

    The first candid film made on a foreign chief of state, three weeks in the life of Jawaharlal Nehru.

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  • 1977
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    Centerbeam

    Centerbeam

    1 1977 HD

    Film produced and directed by Ricky Leacock, Edward Pincus, and MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies documenting the Centerbeam kinetic sculpture project and its first installation at documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany in 1977

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  • 1973
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    Little Richard: Keep on Rockin'

    Little Richard: Keep on Rockin'

    1 1973 HD

    Keep On Rockin', aka Little Richard: Keep On Rockin' (USA video title) is a film of a 1969 Little Richard concert at the Sweet Toronto Peace Festival, originally released in 1970. Richard performs a number of his greatest hits, including "Good Golly Miss Molly," "Long Tall Sally," and "Tutti Frutti." The film is in color.

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  • 1965
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    Elizabeth and Mary

    Elizabeth and Mary

    1 1965 HD

    A film focusing on a day in the life of two identical twin girls, one of whom is blind and mentally handicapped

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  • 1965
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    Ku Klux Klan—The Invisible Empire

    Ku Klux Klan—The Invisible Empire

    1 1965 HD

    A documentary on the KKK

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  • 1960
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    Primary

    Primary

    6.4 1960 HD

    Primary is a documentary film about the primary elections between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in 1960. Primary is the first documentary to use light equipment in order to follow their subjects in a more intimate filmmaking style. This unconventional way of filming created a new look for documentary films where the camera’s lens was right in the middle of what ever drama was occurring. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1998.

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  • 1960
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    Primary

    Primary

    6.4 1960 HD

    Primary is a documentary film about the primary elections between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in 1960. Primary is the first documentary to use light equipment in order to follow their subjects in a more intimate filmmaking style. This unconventional way of filming created a new look for documentary films where the camera’s lens was right in the middle of what ever drama was occurring. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1998.

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  • 1948
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    Louisiana Story

    Louisiana Story

    6.4 1948 HD

    The idyllic life of a young Cajun boy and his pet raccoon is disrupted when the tranquility of the bayou is broken by an oil well drilling near his home.

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  • 1983
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    Community of Praise

    Community of Praise

    1 1983 HD

    This documentary examines one family's desperate search for faith and religious meaning in Muncie, Indiana.

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  • 1962
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    Jane

    Jane

    6.5 1962 HD

    Documentary focusing on 25 year-old actress Jane Fonda as she and her director Andreas Voutsinas prepare a stage play called The Fun Couple for Broadway.

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  • 1963
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    The Chair

    The Chair

    6 1963 HD

    Follows a crusading lawyer as he embarks on a campaign to save an African-American man, Paul Crump, from the electric chair. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2007.

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  • 1963
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    The Chair

    The Chair

    6 1963 HD

    Follows a crusading lawyer as he embarks on a campaign to save an African-American man, Paul Crump, from the electric chair. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2007.

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  • 2008
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    A President to Remember: In the Company of John F. Kennedy

    A President to Remember: In the Company of John F. Kennedy

    10 2008 HD

    Bringing to life an American President who was widely respected by his countrymen and celebrated around the world. Composed from four break through films by Robert Drew, each an unprecedented record in candid photography of a phase of John F. Kennedy’s political life. Kennedy is seen in close up from young Senator campaigning for the Presidency, to an ebullient new President moving into the White House, to a burdened President trying to solve grave problems in the Oval Office. The shock of his death is seen through the faces of his compatriots. Now these four films are edited together with other footage of the time. This film is an intimate history of how one American President struggled to bring wisdom and honor to the office of the Presidency.

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  • 2008
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    A President to Remember: In the Company of John F. Kennedy

    A President to Remember: In the Company of John F. Kennedy

    10 2008 HD

    Bringing to life an American President who was widely respected by his countrymen and celebrated around the world. Composed from four break through films by Robert Drew, each an unprecedented record in candid photography of a phase of John F. Kennedy’s political life. Kennedy is seen in close up from young Senator campaigning for the Presidency, to an ebullient new President moving into the White House, to a burdened President trying to solve grave problems in the Oval Office. The shock of his death is seen through the faces of his compatriots. Now these four films are edited together with other footage of the time. This film is an intimate history of how one American President struggled to bring wisdom and honor to the office of the Presidency.

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  • 2002
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    Monterey Pop: The Outtake Performances

    Monterey Pop: The Outtake Performances

    7.5 2002 HD

    Additional musical performances from the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival in California, shot for the film Monterey Pop (1968) and released on the Criterion Blu-ray The Complete Monterey Pop Festival.

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  • 1935
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    Canary Island Bananas

    Canary Island Bananas

    1 1935 HD

    Filmed on his father's plantation, Leacock’s sophisticated use of pans and tilts described the process of planting, harvesting, and shipping Canary Island bananas made with a little help from Polly Church and Noel Florence. This film was shown to family friend Robert Flaherty, who would hire him after the war, largely based on the remembrance of this early film

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  • 1970
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    Queen of Apollo

    Queen of Apollo

    1 1970 HD

    In 1970 I went to New Orleans with Noel Parmentel to shoot fragments of the “The Moviegoer.” While we were down there my daughter Elspeth and I went to visit some friends of mine whose teenager daughter was to be Queen of a fancy Mardi Gras ball. I didn’t know anything about this, but my friends thought it would be a nice idea if we filmed it. So we went over for an evening; black tie, dinner gown and all the rest of it. We changed a few light bulbs in the house and unobtrusively filmed the evening. I ended up making a 12-minute short with my daughter Elspeth taking sound. – Richard Leacock

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  • 1960
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    Frames of Reference

    Frames of Reference

    9.5 1960 HD

    An educational physics film utilizing a fascinating set consisting of a rotating table and furniture occupying surprisingly unpredictable spots within the viewing area, Leacock’s Frames of Reference (1960), features fine cinematography by Abraham Morochnik, and funny narration by University of Toronto professors Donald Ivey and Patterson Hume, in a wonderful example of the fun a creative team of filmmakers can have with a subject other, less imaginative types might find pedestrian.

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  • 1960
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    Frames of Reference

    Frames of Reference

    9.5 1960 HD

    An educational physics film utilizing a fascinating set consisting of a rotating table and furniture occupying surprisingly unpredictable spots within the viewing area, Leacock’s Frames of Reference (1960), features fine cinematography by Abraham Morochnik, and funny narration by University of Toronto professors Donald Ivey and Patterson Hume, in a wonderful example of the fun a creative team of filmmakers can have with a subject other, less imaginative types might find pedestrian.

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  • 1961
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    The Children Were Watching

    The Children Were Watching

    8 1961 HD

    A harrowing portrait of the struggle for school desegregation in New Orleans against the violent protests of white parents.

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  • 1963
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    A Happy Mother's Day

    A Happy Mother's Day

    5.5 1963 HD

    In 1963 the first known surviving set of American quintuplets were born to Mary Ann and Andrew Fischer, this film looks at some of the changes their arrival caused to their family.

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  • 1971
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    1 P.M.

    1 P.M.

    5.8 1971 HD

    Lighter and livelier than the films Jean-Luc Godard had made in France, his U.S. collaboration with Direct Cinema documentarian D. A. Pennebaker was meant to be One A.M., as in “one American movie”; but Godard quit the project and the U.S., where to his dismay he discovered that revolution wasn’t imminent, and Pennebaker edited Godard’s material, to which he and Richard Leacock even added a bit more, releasing the result as One P.M., as in “one parallel movie.” It’s a stunning mixture of cinéma-vérité, political theater, and interviews of key sixties figures.

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  • 1960
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    Primary

    Primary

    6.4 1960 HD

    Primary is a documentary film about the primary elections between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in 1960. Primary is the first documentary to use light equipment in order to follow their subjects in a more intimate filmmaking style. This unconventional way of filming created a new look for documentary films where the camera’s lens was right in the middle of what ever drama was occurring. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1998.

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  • 1986
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    Louise Brooks

    Louise Brooks

    1 1986 HD

    55-Minute BBC Arena documentary on the film actress Louise Brooks

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  • 1960
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    Integration Report 1

    Integration Report 1

    7.7 1960 HD

    Integration Report 1, Madeline Anderson's trailblazing debut, was the first known documentary by an African American female director. With tenacity, empathy and skill, Anderson assembles a vital record of desegregation efforts around the country in 1959 and 1960, featuring footage by documentary legends Albert Maysles and Richard Leacock and early Black cameraman Robert Puello, singing by Maya Angelou, and narration by playwright Loften Mitchell. Anderson fleetly moves from sit-ins in Montgomery, Alabama to a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, D.C. to a protest of the unprosecuted death in police custody of an unarmed Black man in Brooklyn, capturing the incredible reach and scope of the civil rights movement, and working with this diverse of footage, as she would later say, “like an artist with a palette using different colors.”

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  • 1964
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    Lambert & Co.

    Lambert & Co.

    4.5 1964 HD

    Jazz vocalist Dave Lambert auditions a new group of singers at RCA Studios in 1964.

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  • 1964
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    Campaign Manager

    Campaign Manager

    1 1964 HD

    This brief portrait follows 28-year-old campaign manager John Grenier as he maps out strategies for Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential run and engineers a takeover of the Republican convention.

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  • 1962
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    Mooney vs. Fowle

    Mooney vs. Fowle

    1 1962 HD

    The doc brings us back to a 1961 football game played in front of 40,000 people at the Orange Bowl. A high school football game, pitting Miami High against their rivals from Edison High. The title refers to the coaches of each, and the film follows them separately, with their real families and their clan of players, in the days leading up to the big event. And then at last it astonishingly chronicles the game from all kinds of angles you wouldn’t expect from even the newly mobile tools of the Drew crew. Today’s television coverage doesn’t come nearly as close to capturing the spirit of the sport and its fans the way Lipscomb does here. (Nothing But the Doc)

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  • 1961
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    Adventures on the New Frontier

    Adventures on the New Frontier

    5.5 1961 HD

    A look at the daily business of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, with a focus on some of the political issues he faces six weeks into his term. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.

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  • 1968
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    Two American Audiences: La Chinoise - A Film in the Making

    Two American Audiences: La Chinoise - A Film in the Making

    6 1968 HD

    Jean-Luc Godard visits NYU in order to discuss his latest feature "La chinoise" with graduate students on filmmaking and politics.

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  • 1992
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    Chuck Berry: Rock and Roll Music

    Chuck Berry: Rock and Roll Music

    8 1992 HD

    A pioneer in the world of rock-'n'-roll guitar, Chuck Berry has created a legacy that spans decades. Berry performs some of his greatest hits and all-time favorites in this concert video that was filmed on September 13, 1969 at 'Toronto Rock'n'Roll Revival.' The Concert includes the songs "Rock and Roll Music," "Long Live Rock and Roll," "Johnny B. Goode," "Promised Land," "Carol," "Hoochie Koochie Man," "Maybellene," "Too Much Monkey Business," "Reelin' and Rockin'," "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "In the Wee, Wee Hours."

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  • 2011
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    BodySongs

    BodySongs

    1 2011 HD

    The classical nude as video in four male/female duets

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  • 1961
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    On the Pole: Eddie Sachs

    On the Pole: Eddie Sachs

    1 1961 HD

    The documentary traces Eddie Sachs (one of the most popular drivers in the history of the Indianapolis 500) in a behind-the-scenes look at the race from his perspective, starting from a week before the race through the day after the big event. You can feel the fervor and anticipation build (*pay close attention to the scaffolding that collapses with too many people on it during the race) as Eddie prepares to keep his place, "on the pole." Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.

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  • 1968
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    Chiefs

    Chiefs

    7.2 1968 HD

    Filmed at the October 1968 meeting in Hawaii of several hundred police chiefs of the International Association of Chiefs of Police as they watch demonstrations of gruesome anti-riot weapons, sing patriotic songs, and defend their policies in front of the camera. Although filmed with the permission of the chiefs, the view is unsympathetic, sometimes funny, and more often frightening.

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  • 1960
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    Christopher and Me

    Christopher and Me

    5 1960 HD

    Twins Christopher and David gets into an untethered sailboat and inadvertently gets involved in a nearby sailboat race.

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  • 1967
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    A Stravinsky Portrait

    A Stravinsky Portrait

    7 1967 HD

    This documentary follows composer and conductor Igor Stavinsky at his home in California, in London, and in Hamburg where he conducts an orchestra rehearsal. Includes conversations with a variety of friends and musical collaborators. Includes footage of Stravinsky and Balanchine discussing the Variations (in memoriam Aldous Huxley) and rehearsing their ballet Apollo with Suzanne Farrell.

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  • 1967
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    A Stravinsky Portrait

    A Stravinsky Portrait

    7 1967 HD

    This documentary follows composer and conductor Igor Stavinsky at his home in California, in London, and in Hamburg where he conducts an orchestra rehearsal. Includes conversations with a variety of friends and musical collaborators. Includes footage of Stravinsky and Balanchine discussing the Variations (in memoriam Aldous Huxley) and rehearsing their ballet Apollo with Suzanne Farrell.

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  • 1960
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    Yanki No!

    Yanki No!

    6.3 1960 HD

    After the US forces Cuba out of the OAS, demonstrations erupt in Venezuela. In Cuba Castro addresses a rally of one million people.

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  • 1956
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    A Conversation with Marcel Duchamp

    A Conversation with Marcel Duchamp

    1 1956 HD

    Filmed amidst the Arensberg collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where 35 works by Marcel Duchamp are gathered, this 1956 NBC interview features the artist talking with James Johnson Sweeney, former director of the Guggenheim Museum. Duchamp describes his transition away from Impressionism toward a Cubist, and then post-Cubist, approach, providing commentary while standing before Nude Descending a Staircase

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  • 1957
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    American Football

    American Football

    1 1957 HD

    A coach’s whole career depends upon winning this football game, the U.S. Air Force Academy against the University of Colorado. The film was an early experiment by Drew and his Associates to capture real life happening in front of the cameras. They had not yet developed the new equipment that would allow portable sync-sound filming, so they improvised. Drew, who was still a correspondent for LIFE Magazine at the time, was trying to make films that would promote LIFE stories on television. This idea was how Drew had convinced Time-Life to bankroll his fledgling film unit. Although the football story never became a LIFE magazine cover story, it served as a kind of dry-run for a film about another football game covered by Drew and his Associates four years later. That film, “Mooney vs. Fowle,” led by filmmaker James Lipscomb, became an award-winning, groundbreaking documentary.

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  • 1954
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    Toby and the Tall Corn

    Toby and the Tall Corn

    1 1954 HD

    Toby is a heartwarming and entertaining portrait of one of the last travelling variety shows in the United States. Every summer, Toby, the troupe's charming, down-to-earth owner/lead actor takes his small band of performers to towns across the Midwest to perform under a massive tent. Leacock captures the heat of the summer night on the faces of the appreciative audiences, the thrill of the live performances and the challenge of the set-up.

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  • 1954
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    Toby and the Tall Corn

    Toby and the Tall Corn

    1 1954 HD

    Toby is a heartwarming and entertaining portrait of one of the last travelling variety shows in the United States. Every summer, Toby, the troupe's charming, down-to-earth owner/lead actor takes his small band of performers to towns across the Midwest to perform under a massive tent. Leacock captures the heat of the summer night on the faces of the appreciative audiences, the thrill of the live performances and the challenge of the set-up.

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  • 1954
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    Toby and the Tall Corn

    Toby and the Tall Corn

    1 1954 HD

    Toby is a heartwarming and entertaining portrait of one of the last travelling variety shows in the United States. Every summer, Toby, the troupe's charming, down-to-earth owner/lead actor takes his small band of performers to towns across the Midwest to perform under a massive tent. Leacock captures the heat of the summer night on the faces of the appreciative audiences, the thrill of the live performances and the challenge of the set-up.

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  • 1954
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    Toby and the Tall Corn

    Toby and the Tall Corn

    1 1954 HD

    Toby is a heartwarming and entertaining portrait of one of the last travelling variety shows in the United States. Every summer, Toby, the troupe's charming, down-to-earth owner/lead actor takes his small band of performers to towns across the Midwest to perform under a massive tent. Leacock captures the heat of the summer night on the faces of the appreciative audiences, the thrill of the live performances and the challenge of the set-up.

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  • 1991
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    Les oeufs à la coque de Richard Leacock

    Les oeufs à la coque de Richard Leacock

    1 1991 HD

    Inspired by both new love and Gulliver's Travels, Les Oeufs à la Coque (aka Richard Leacock's Soft-Boiled Eggs), is a ravishingly beautiful, important film about nothing in particular, a love song dedicated to France, French women in general and one Frenchwoman in particular, and a montage portrait of quotidian life in a country at peace.

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  • 1971
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    Maidstone

    Maidstone

    3.9 1971 HD

    Over a booze-fueled, increasingly hectic five-day shoot in East Hampton, Norman Mailer and his cast and crew spontaneously unloaded onto film the lurid and loony chronicle of U.S. presidential candidate and filmmaker Norman T. Kingsley debating and attacking his hangers-on and enemies. This gonzo narrative, “an inkblot test of Mailer’s own subconscious” (Time), becomes something like a documentary on its own making when costar Rip Torn breaks the fourth wall in one of cinema’s most alarming on-screen outbursts.

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  • 1958
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    Brussels Loops

    Brussels Loops

    1 1958 HD

    A collection of twenty short films, averaging 2-3 minutes, by various filmmakers depicting American life, intended to be shown in a continuous loop at the American Pavilion of the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. Some releases of the film include ten extra minutes of rough cuts.

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  • 1971
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    1 P.M.

    1 P.M.

    5.8 1971 HD

    Lighter and livelier than the films Jean-Luc Godard had made in France, his U.S. collaboration with Direct Cinema documentarian D. A. Pennebaker was meant to be One A.M., as in “one American movie”; but Godard quit the project and the U.S., where to his dismay he discovered that revolution wasn’t imminent, and Pennebaker edited Godard’s material, to which he and Richard Leacock even added a bit more, releasing the result as One P.M., as in “one parallel movie.” It’s a stunning mixture of cinéma-vérité, political theater, and interviews of key sixties figures.

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  • 1971
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    1 P.M.

    1 P.M.

    5.8 1971 HD

    Lighter and livelier than the films Jean-Luc Godard had made in France, his U.S. collaboration with Direct Cinema documentarian D. A. Pennebaker was meant to be One A.M., as in “one American movie”; but Godard quit the project and the U.S., where to his dismay he discovered that revolution wasn’t imminent, and Pennebaker edited Godard’s material, to which he and Richard Leacock even added a bit more, releasing the result as One P.M., as in “one parallel movie.” It’s a stunning mixture of cinéma-vérité, political theater, and interviews of key sixties figures.

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  • 1962
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    Kenya: Land of the White Ghost

    Kenya: Land of the White Ghost

    1 1962 HD

    A film by the Drew-Leacock team.

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  • 1948
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    Louisiana Story

    Louisiana Story

    6.4 1948 HD

    The idyllic life of a young Cajun boy and his pet raccoon is disrupted when the tranquility of the bayou is broken by an oil well drilling near his home.

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  • 1968
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    RainForest

    RainForest

    1 1968 HD

    Leacock and Pennebaker filmed choreographer Merce Cunningham’s dance “RainForest” as part of the 1968 Buffalo Arts Festival’s program “Whose Afraid of the Avant-Garde” presenting experimental art, music, dance, poetry and theater. The dance composition also featured music by David Tudor, costumes by Jasper Johns and sets by Andy Warhol.

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  • 1959
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    A Magnet Laboratory

    A Magnet Laboratory

    1 1959 HD

    In the hands of another director, the inner-workings of a magnet laboratory could have caused a whole classroom to fall asleep of boredom. No so when Leacock was hired to produce this twenty-minute version of lab mayhem. Try this: six researchers in a lab at MIT in the late 1950's show-off the power of electro-magnets, and in the process, accidentally set an experiment on fire. Or this: half way through the film the phone rings off screen, and host Francis Bitter says "tell 'em I'll call 'em back later" while he's looking at the camera, discussing bus bars. Leacock’s fleshed out all the personalities here, from "Beans" Bardo, who cranks up the generator to nearly explosive proportions, to the mysterious Mr. Lin, who barely peeks over his shoulder at us, seemingly in mockery, disdain, or curiosity.

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  • 1984
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    Lulu in Berlin

    Lulu in Berlin

    7 1984 HD

    Vérité documentarian Richard Leacock’s LULU IN BERLIN features one of the few long interviews ever done with actor Louise Brooks. It took place in her apartment in Rochester, New York, in 1971.

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  • 1984
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    Lulu in Berlin

    Lulu in Berlin

    7 1984 HD

    Vérité documentarian Richard Leacock’s LULU IN BERLIN features one of the few long interviews ever done with actor Louise Brooks. It took place in her apartment in Rochester, New York, in 1971.

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  • 1987
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    Jimi Plays Monterey

    Jimi Plays Monterey

    7.4 1987 HD

    Jimi Hendrix's debut American set at 1967's Monterey Pop Festival is generally considered one of the most radical and legendary live shows ever. Virtually unknown to American audiences at the time, even though he was already an established entity in the UK, Hendrix and his two-piece Experience explode on stage, ripping through blues classics "Rock Me Baby" and Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor," interpreting and electrifying Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," debuting songs from his yet-to-be-released first album and closing with the now historic sacrificing/burning of his guitar during an unhinged version of "Wild Thing" that even its writer Chip Taylor would never have imagined. Hendrix uses feedback and distortion to enhance the songs in whisper-to-scream intensity, blazing territory that had not been previously explored with as much soul-frazzled power.

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  • 1987
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    Shake! Otis at Monterey

    Shake! Otis at Monterey

    7.2 1987 HD

    Renowned documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker captures Otis Redding in his ascendancy, singing at the historic Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967. Comedian Tom Smothers introduces Redding to a crowd that is leaving -- until Redding grabs them with his charged rendition of "Shake." Redding's performance also includes "Respect" (which he wrote), "I've Been Loving You Too Long," "Satisfaction," and "Try a Little Tenderness." Tragically, Redding died in a plane crash six months later. An innovative filmmaker who started in the 1950s making experimental films, Pennebaker garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature in 1993 for The War Room, his behind-the-scenes look at Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. His other subjects have included Norman Mailer, Bob Dylan, and David Bowie.

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  • 1968
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    Monterey Pop

    Monterey Pop

    7.3 1968 HD

    Featuring performances by popular artists of the 1960s, this concert film highlights the music of the 1967 California festival. Although not all musicians who performed at the Monterey Pop Festival are on film, some of the notable acts include the Mamas and the Papas, Simon & Garfunkel, Jefferson Airplane, the Who, Otis Redding, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Hendrix's post-performance antics -- lighting a guitar on fire, breaking it and tossing a part into the audience -- are captured.

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  • 1960
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    Christopher and Me

    Christopher and Me

    5 1960 HD

    Twins Christopher and David gets into an untethered sailboat and inadvertently gets involved in a nearby sailboat race.

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  • 1964
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    Campaign Manager

    Campaign Manager

    1 1964 HD

    This brief portrait follows 28-year-old campaign manager John Grenier as he maps out strategies for Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential run and engineers a takeover of the Republican convention.

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  • 1967
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    A Stravinsky Portrait

    A Stravinsky Portrait

    7 1967 HD

    This documentary follows composer and conductor Igor Stavinsky at his home in California, in London, and in Hamburg where he conducts an orchestra rehearsal. Includes conversations with a variety of friends and musical collaborators. Includes footage of Stravinsky and Balanchine discussing the Variations (in memoriam Aldous Huxley) and rehearsing their ballet Apollo with Suzanne Farrell.

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  • 1947
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    To Hear Your Banjo Play

    To Hear Your Banjo Play

    4.5 1947 HD

    A short film about Pete Seeger and the birth of banjo music throughout the Southern United States.

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  • 1968
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    French Lunch

    French Lunch

    1 1968 HD

    Documentary look behind the scenes of La Caravelle, an acclaimed French restaurant in New York City.

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  • 1970
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    Original Cast Album: Company

    Original Cast Album: Company

    7.2 1970 HD

    In 1970, right after the triumphant premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s groundbreaking concept musical Company, the renowned composer and lyricist, his director Harold Prince, the show’s stars, and a large pit orchestra all went into a Manhattan recording studio as part of a time-honored Broadway tradition: the making of the original cast album. What ensued was a marathon session in which, with the pressures of posterity and the coolly exacting Sondheim’s perfectionism hanging over them, all involved pushed themselves to the limit.

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  • 1954
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    Jazz Dance

    Jazz Dance

    5.5 1954 HD

    Few films wield the awesome spiritual power of Jazz Dance, on which Leacock was one of two cameramen charting the slow, smoldering build of a Manhattan dance club from idle space to explosive, carnal bacchanal. Employing handheld cameras, limited light and sheer proximity, the film achieved an intimacy never before witnessed in a documentary.

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  • 1981
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    Rebuilding an Old Japanese House

    Rebuilding an Old Japanese House

    1 1981 HD

    Five Japanese carpenters came to Boston that summer to reconstruct a Kyoto silkweaver's 150 year old townhouse that had been packed in crates and shipped to Boston Children's Museum. This first-hand observation of traditional tools and woodworking techniques chronicles the assembly process. In the progress of construction the contractor performed three Shinto housebuilding ceremonies.

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  • 1999
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    Flora Natapoff - An American Painter

    Flora Natapoff - An American Painter

    1 1999 HD

    Flora Natapoff, known for her large collages of urban and industrial motifs, due to MS begins to work on a smaller scale that is no less powerful. She speaks of her way of looking, the impact of landscape, and a new sense of narrative and composition. A legendary teacher at Harvard, her compelling account introduces us to her highly original work.

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  • 1980
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    Light Coming Through: A Portrait of Maud Morgan

    Light Coming Through: A Portrait of Maud Morgan

    1 1980 HD

    This 23-minute, 16mm color film by Nancy V. Raine (Producer/Co-Director) and Richard Leacock (Co-Director/Cinematographer) is a poetic, lyrical, impressionistic collaboration by Raine, a poet and writer, Leacock, a leading figure in the direct cinema movement, and Maud Morgan, the film’s subject, a Boston-area visual artist who was 78 years old when the film premiered at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts on October 21, 1980.

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  • 1970
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    Queen of Apollo

    Queen of Apollo

    1 1970 HD

    In 1970 I went to New Orleans with Noel Parmentel to shoot fragments of the “The Moviegoer.” While we were down there my daughter Elspeth and I went to visit some friends of mine whose teenager daughter was to be Queen of a fancy Mardi Gras ball. I didn’t know anything about this, but my friends thought it would be a nice idea if we filmed it. So we went over for an evening; black tie, dinner gown and all the rest of it. We changed a few light bulbs in the house and unobtrusively filmed the evening. I ended up making a 12-minute short with my daughter Elspeth taking sound. – Richard Leacock

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  • 1970
    imgS8 E7

    6 1970 HD

    Omnibus is an American, commercially sponsored, educational television series.

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  • 1970
    imgS3 E17

    6 1970 HD

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  • 1970
    imgS3 E17

    6 1970 HD

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  • 1970
    imgS1 E5

    1 1970 HD

    Six-part documentary on the city of Muncie, Indiana - nicknamed "Middletown" after a study in the 1920s deemed it representative of middle America. The series finds that amid the great ...

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