Featuring the Films of

September 23 & 25,1998
Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue
University at Albany, Downtown Campus

Directors D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus will provide film commentary and answer questions immediately following the Friday night screening of Moon Over Broadway.

With over fifty years of film experience between them, D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus form one of the most respected and unique teams of documentary filmmakers working today. From politics to dance, from rock and roll to Samuel Beckett, the duo's work combines elements of journalism, documentary, biography, and cultural and artistic history. During the late 1950's Pennebaker worked with a group of filmmakers dedicated to furthering the use of film in journalism. Over the course of five years, Pennebaker and his colleagues established what would become know as "cinema verité" or "direct cinema," an unobtrusive, immediate style of filmmaking that rejected the standard practice of voice-over narration in favor of recording real people and events as they happened.

Chris Hegedus began her career as a camera person for the University of Michigan Hospital filming burn surgery. After moving to New York City she began editing for Pennebaker what was to become Town Bloody Hall. In 1977 the two teamed up with Pat Powell to make The Energy War, a five-hour "political soap opera" on President Carter's battle with Congress to deregulate natural gas. From this point on Pennebaker and Hegedus became a film making team continuing to point their cameras at a variety of subjects: DeLorean, a portrait of automobile entrepreneur John Z. DeLorean; Rockaby, documenting the rehearsal and first performance of Samuel Beckett's play of the same name; Dance Black America, showcasing a four-day festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; The Music Tells You, featuring Branford Marsalis and his trio; and The War Room, a 1993 feature documentary on the Clinton 1992 Presidential campaign, which was nominated for an Academy Award and received the prestigious D. W. Griffith Award for Best Documentary by the National Board of Review. Other productions include Jimi Hendrix: Live in Monterey (1967) the complete performance of Jimi Hendrix at Monterey; Shake, Otis Redding's moving set from the same festival; Sweet Toronto (1969), the historic premiere of the John Lennon/Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival; Monterey Pop (1968), David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust & Spiders from Mars (1972), and Startup.com (20001).