Dear Filmmakers and Friends,
LEF is excited to announce a screening series that introduces audiences to New England’s unique history of documentary filmmaking.
The spring 2025 screening series will include works by early documentary filmmakers whose names might be familiar to some, and others whose work is not as widely known. These were women and men in their mid-twenties. Many were graduate students at the former MIT Film Section, some were students and faculty at Harvard University, while others worked outside of traditional educational institutions.
In sharing these groundbreaking films, we aim to deepen our appreciation for this innovative body of work, whose legacy continues to inform today’s documentary filmmaking in countless ways.
Each program will be comprised of 2 to 3 films, as most works are under an hour, connected loosely by a general theme. Two programs are scheduled for this March, with more to be announced for April and May.
The series is inspired by Scott MacDonald’s 2013 book, The Cambridge Turn: American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary, which focuses on work generated at Harvard and the MIT Film Section and the cross-pollination that evolved between their faculty and students. Their filmmaking was aided in no small part by their own technological innovations that allowed for radical new approaches to the form. After reading MacDonald’s book, we imagined a series that would begin to “bring long overdue attention” to those who made seminal contributions to the documentary field.
Lyda Kuth
Executive Director
LEF Foundation
New England Legacy Screenings Program Notes
New England has a rich history in documentary filmmaking that continues today. Beginning in the 1960s–’80s, filmmakers in the Boston area were pioneering technical innovations that allowed for radical new approaches to documentary that influenced the genre’s directions. Their early cinema vérité work set the trajectory of documentary filmmaking in the US and created landmark works posing questions of politics, gender, and social norms and rituals.
These screenings will highlight the variety of styles developed amidst this ever-evolving cinematic legacy, from the journalistic to first-person autobiographical storytelling. Each evening we will examine multiple artists whose stories created impact and whose artistic lens sparks dialogue to the present day.
Wednesday, March 5, 7pm, Coolidge Corner Theatre
David Holzman’s Diary (dir. Jim McBride, 1967, 74 min)
David Holzman’s Diary is a signature film in the history of documentary filmmaking that isn’t a documentary. It’s a fictional narrative that satirizes the supposedly “unmediated reality” that cinema vérité, or observational cinema, was seen to be. David Holzman (played by actor L.M. Kit Carson) unloads comic-neurotic monologues to his 16mm camera, with humor and pathos, reminiscent of the “personally expressive cinema” emerging out of Boston at this time.
Riverdogs (dir. Robb Moss, 1978, 32 min)
A lyrical chronicle of a thirty-five day river trip along the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. His thesis film as a graduate student at the MIT Film Section, Moss’ inspired photography shapes what becomes a meditation on youth, nature, and an idyllic, fleeting moment in time.
Backyard (dir. Ross McElwee, 1984, 40 min)
Backyard was McElwee’s breakthrough autobiographical film and thesis work as a graduate student at the MIT Film Section. He portrays his southern roots through a portrayal of family members—his brother, an aspiring medical student; his father, a surgeon—as well as depicting the nuances of race and relationships.
