Richard Leacock

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

A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.

During a two-day period before and after the University of Alabama integration crisis, the film uses five camera crews to follow President John F. Kennedy, attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, Alabama governor George Wallace, deputy attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach and the students Vivian Malone and James Hood. As Wallace has promised to personally block the two black students from enrolling in the university, the JFK administration discusses the best way to react to it, without rousing the crowd or making Wallace a martyr for the segregationist cause. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1999.

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.

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.

Documentarian Ross McElwee originally set out to make a travelogue of sorts tracing General William T. Sherman's infamous scorched-earth march through the Confederacy in the latter stages of the Civil War. Instead, haunted by a recent breakup with a girlfriend, McElwee ends up documenting his progress -- or lack thereof -- in starting a new relationship. His journey then becomes one of self-reflection and self-discovery rather than a historical/sociological exploration.

During a two-day period before and after the University of Alabama integration crisis, the film uses five camera crews to follow President John F. Kennedy, attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, Alabama governor George Wallace, deputy attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach and the students Vivian Malone and James Hood. As Wallace has promised to personally block the two black students from enrolling in the university, the JFK administration discusses the best way to react to it, without rousing the crowd or making Wallace a martyr for the segregationist cause. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1999.

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.

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.

A direct-cinema portrait of Indianapolis 500 driver Eddie Sachs, filmed before, during, and after the 1960 race as he competes from pole position. Using pioneering mobile camera and sound techniques, the film captures the psychological intensity of racing and the personal cost of high-speed competition.

A cinéma vérité documentary observing the Fischer family of Aberdeen, South Dakota, following the 1963 birth of the first surviving American quintuplets. Filmed shortly after the event, the film contrasts civic promotion, media attention, and commercial interest with the private fatigue and quiet suffering of Mrs. Fischer, revealing the tensions between spectacle and family life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

A documentary on the KKK

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

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.

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

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.

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)

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

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

A short documentary in which twins Christopher and David describe how an unplanned sailing trip led them into the midst of a boat race. Told largely from the children’s point of view, the film reflects Richard Leacock’s observational approach and includes contributions from Shirley Clarke and D. A. Pennebaker.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A film by the Drew-Leacock team.

A short documentary made by Richard Leacock at the age of fourteen on his father’s banana plantation in the Canary Islands. Inspired by Soviet industrial films such as Turksib, the film traces the planting, harvesting, and preparation of bananas for shipment, using fluid pans and tilts to organize labor into a continuous visual sequence. Often cited as Leacock’s earliest completed film, it attracted the attention of Robert Flaherty and foreshadowed Leacock’s later observational documentary style.

A short documentary made by Richard Leacock at the age of fourteen on his father’s banana plantation in the Canary Islands. Inspired by Soviet industrial films such as Turksib, the film traces the planting, harvesting, and preparation of bananas for shipment, using fluid pans and tilts to organize labor into a continuous visual sequence. Often cited as Leacock’s earliest completed film, it attracted the attention of Robert Flaherty and foreshadowed Leacock’s later observational documentary style.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.