Award-winning director, cinematographer and producer Albert Maysles will be on the University of Central Arkansas campus Oct. 17 for UCA’s Artists in Residence program.
His residency will be in conjunction with the 17th Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, the oldest documentary film festival in the United States.
“I think Maysles will bring a lifetime of experience to UCA,” said Dr. Bruce Hutchinson, assistant professor of mass communication and the faculty sponsor for the residency. “He is one of the foremost living documentary filmmakers in the world today.”
Maysles will hold a master class at 12 noon on Friday, Oct. 17, in Stanley Russ Hall, Room 103.On Friday evening, Maysles will present the opening night film at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Hot Springs National Park. On Saturday, Oct. 18, there will be a retrospective of his work. Times and dates for the Maysles events in Hot Springs are yet to be announced. For more information, contact the Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute at (501) 321-4747 or visit the Web site www.hsdfi.org. The festival runs Oct. 17-26.
Maysles has been making films for more than half a century and is considered one of America’s foremost non-fiction filmmakers. He and his late brother David are recognized as pioneers of “direct cinema,” a desire to directly capture a true representation of reality. Their documentaries were the first non-fiction feature films without scripts, sets, or narration in the United States.
He has worked as cinematographer/director/producer on some of the greatest documentaries of the past 40 years, including Salesman, Monterey Pop, Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens.
Albert Maysles received his B.A. at Syracuse and his M.A. at Boston University. While at Boston University, he taught psychology for three years until he took a 16mm camera and filmed patients in several Russian mental hospitals in 1955. The end result was his first documentary, Psychiatry in Russia.
In the 1960s, the Maysles brothers had a string of successful documentaries including Meet Marlon Brando and With Love From Truman. In 1965, Maysles was made a Guggenheim Fellow, an award for advanced professionals in the field of performing arts.
His 1968 non-fiction feature film, Salesman, the story of door-to-door Bible salesmen, won an award from the National Society of Film Critics and is known as
