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Since 1988, International Films
Seminars/The Flaherty has annually presented the Leo
Awards to recognize excellence in the field of independent
media. The Leo Awards are named in honor of Leo Dratfield
(1918-1986), a pioneer of independent and nontheatrical
film distribution who sought outstanding international
and independent productions and encouraged their use
in libraries and cultural centers. The Leo Awards
are presented to individuals or organizations who
most exemplify Dratfield’s commitment and spirit
and who combine a sustained ability to introduce innovative
approaches in independent media. The awards, funded
by the Leo Dratfield Endowment, are presented in two
categories: “Exhibitor, Distributor, or Programmer”
and “Filmmaker or Producer” for excellence
in the field. This year’s the awardees are Amos
and Marcia Vogel and Richard Leacock.
Amos and Marcia Vogel created the Cinema 16 Film Society
in New York, promoting experimental, foreign, avant-garde,
scientific, all kinds of innovative and daring cinema.
Ricky Leacock embodies the innovative, unorthodox
approach to cinema with a genuine interest and human
concern. The three Dratfield awardees represent major
accomplishments in the advancement of American cinema
and their influence permeates the contemporary scene.
For making tonight’s program possible, our sincere
thanks go to Nadine Covert, Robert Gardner, John Gianvito,
Margarita De La Vega Hurtado, Victoria Leacock, Valerie
Lalonde, the Leacock family, Michel Negroponte, Gerry
O'Grady, David Shengold, Raymond Sheline, Bo Smith
and Artemis Willis.
When he was 14 years old, Richard
“Ricky” Leacock made a film about his
father’s plantation in the Canary Islands. Canary
Bananas might have remained yet another promising
amateur effort, but Leacock had the good fortune of
having his boarding school be visited by Robert Flaherty
himself; Flaherty saw the film, and encouraged Leacock
to come see him some time. Years later — after
finishing college and serving in the war — Leacock
indeed did look up Flaherty, and the next day joined
Flaherty on a journey down South to begin work on
what would become Flaherty’s Louisiana Story.
After working with Flaherty, Leacock became an integral
part of a pioneering group of filmmakers and producers
(such as D.A. Pennebaker, Robert Drew, and Albert
Maysles) who were trying to develop lightweight synchronous
sound equipment to go along with their 16mm cameras.
After years of experimentation, the Robert Drew-produced
Primary (1960), on which Leacock was one
of the principal cameramen, announced that a new era
in documentary cinema had indeed begun. As a filmmaker
and later as a teacher, Leacock was one of the key
influences on the development of American “cinema
vérité;” his patient, observational
style had an almost uncanny ability to reveal the
inner thoughts and dilemmas of his subjects. Ricky
Leacock is one of those figures in American cinema
whose impact has been so powerful and so extensive
that it’s at times hard to point it out specifically
because it seems to be everywhere; we’re all
Ricky’s children now. We’re honored to
welcome him to the Walter Reade Theater and to this
special screening of his wonderful recent collaboration
with Sarah Caldwell.
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“…a charming
diary of musical personalities and culture clashes
filmed in Russia’s remote Ural region. In 1996,
conductor and opera impresario Sarah Caldwell invited
Leacock to the large industrial city of Ekaterinburg
to observe as she prepared a group of Russian musicians
for the world premiere of Prokoviev’s Eugene
Onegin, a piece banned in 1937 by the Stalin
regime and never before produced. In addition to capturing
a world-class performance of Prokofiev’s masterpiece,
Leacock conveyed the subtle atmosphere around the
production. Part musical odyssey and part personal
travelogue, A Musical Adventure in Siberia with
Sarah Caldwell is the latest in Leacock’s
films to capture “the feeling of being there.”
– from notes prepared by the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston
Born in Vienna in 1921, Amos Vogel emigrated to the
United States in the fall of 1938, six months after
the Nazis had annexed his country. In preparation
for his planned move to Palestine, he accepted a scholarship
in agricultural training from the National Youth Administration
and took classes at the University of Georgia in agricultural
sciences. After deciding to remain in America, Vogel
took a degree in economics from the New School for
Social Research in New York. From 1947 until 1963,
he and his wife Marcia ran Cinema 16, the most successful
and influential membership film society in American
history, at its height boasting 7,000 members. What
audiences saw at Cinema 16 changed their lives and
had an enduring impact not only on the New York City
cultural scene but nationwide. The Vogels’ distribution
of landmark documentary and avant-garde films helped
make a place for many films that could never have
had commercial release, given the pressures of commercialism
and censorship during the postwar era. After the demise
of Cinema 16, Amos Vogel went on to become one of
the founders of the New York Film Festival, and served
as its co-director from 1963 to 1968. His 1974 book
Film as a Subversive Art details the “accelerating
world-wide trend toward a more liberated cinema, in
which subjects and forms hitherto considered unthinkable
or forbidden are boldly explored.” Over the
years Vogel has worked a film consultant to Grove
Press and National Educational Television, a program
director of the National Public Television Conference,
and has served as Chairman of the American Selection
Committee for the Cannes, Moscow, Berlin and Venice
film festivals. He also taught at Harvard University,
the New School for Social Research, New York University,
and for many years at the University of Pennsylvania's
Annenberg School.
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Fri Nov 11: 3:00
Fri Nov 11: 6:15
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Widely recognized as the father of American
art house cinema, Amos Vogel is one of the great intellectual
mavericks of film history. Together with his wife
Marcia, Amos introduced audiences to directors like
John Cassavetes and Roman Polanski, as well as to
documentary and avant-garde films from around the
world. Paul Cronin’s absorbing and thoroughly
researched tribute focuses on the Vogels’ Cinema
16 days, when they shocked censors and delighted audiences
by introducing a whole world of new forms and possibilities
of cinematic expression. |
Fri Nov 11: 4:30
Fri Nov 11: 8:00 |
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