After a thorough schooling with Robert Flaherty – he spent fourteen months doing camera on Louisiana Story (1946) – Richard Leacock developed a film style that would go down in history as Direct Cinema in the early sixties with people like D.A. Pennebaker and the Maysles brothers. Since his retirement as film teacher, Leacock has been converted to using video Hi-8 and again has the feeling he is experiencing the eve of a revolutionary change in documentary film-making. The manageable and above all inexpensive technique of video gives him complete production freedom. He can now film what he likes and the result can be seen in the free and playful videos he now makes with his partner Valérie Lalonde.During the festival a selection of their recent work will be screened. In a programme to be presented by Leacock and Lalonde that will comprise a combination of a lecture and the screening of fragments, other titles will also be shown (in part).
