LEF continues the New England Legacy Screenings with a second program coming up this Wednesday, March 19, at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.
This screening will be comprised of two films, Primary by Robert Drew, and The Collective: Fifteen Years Later, by Richard Broadman. Drew’s groundbreaking 1960 film, Primary, introduced a whole new approach to journalism, which is the world Drew came from. He collaborated with others to develop innovative light-weight equipment that allowed for a more intimate, observational kind of filmmaking. It involved synchronized sound and image via a cassette tape recorder and camera (an over-simplified description that involved some physics!) that came to be known as “sync-sound”. This new equipment led to a blossoming of independent work originating in New England and to filmmakers here continuing to innovate the documentary form.
Richard Broadman is one of these makers, whose films sought to capture contemporary sociological issues locally that include Mission Hill and the Miracle of Boston (1978) and Down the Project: The Crisis of Public Housing (1982). The Collective: Fifteen Years Later (1985), was a departure from his other films in that it looks back to an earlier time. The impetus for the film was Susi Walsh and the late Fred Simon, who launched Center for Independent Documentary in 1981. They approached Richard and his filmmaking colleague John Grady with a question about what had become of the political activism of the late 1960-70s. John Grady himself was an activist and reached out to those he knew, including a fellow activist, Michael Ansara, who appears in the film. A candid conversation between the participants captures parts of their experience back then and their current perspective on where things stood 15 years later in the mid-1980s.
Both John Grady and Michael Ansara will be joining us for a discussion, and no doubt have thoughts to share on where things stand today.
Stay tuned for more screenings to come.
Lyda Kuth
Executive Director
LEF Foundation
Wednesday, March 19, 7pm, Coolidge Corner Theatre
Primary (dir. Robert Drew, 1960, 53 min)
Robert Drew’s groundbreaking 1960 film Primary is one of the most important and influential documentaries in the history of the medium. A pioneering work in the documentary movement that came to be known as cinéma vérité, Primary follows the young charismatic senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, as he goes head-to-head with established Minnesota senator Hubert Humphrey to win the Wisconsin presidential primary in April 1960.
The Collective (dir. Richard Broadman, 1985, 60 min)
In 1970, thousands of young people thought of themselves as agents of change. They wanted to restore America’s democratic vision; they wanted to end the war in Vietnam. This is the story of one collective—their successes and failures, and what they do and think fifteen years later.
The Collective: Fifteen Years Later, released in 1985, is a portrayal of political activism, “reflecting on both the excitement and the disappointment of their political engagement, informants are, by turns, candid, rueful, and idealistic; they’re unsparing in acknowledging their own mistakes both in analyzing and in organizing against a structure of oppression centering on, but extending beyond, militarism and neocolonialism.” – Chris Wellin, “Documentary Film, Teaching, and the Accumulation of Sociological Insight: The Work of Richard Broadman”, Teaching Sociology (2013)
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.
