A night of unseen Maysles Brothers work

SNAPSHOTS
Rare Cinematic Shorts, Out-takes and Commercial Work by
THE MAYSLES BROTHERS
A special program curated for STOP SMILING

STOP SMILING presents a selection of work by the documentary pioneers
behind Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens and Salesman. This one-night-only
program of Direct Cinema portraits and explorations will span both the
myriad subjects that have caught the attention of the Maysles’ lens, as
well as the five prolific decades since the brothers’ first film.

Taken out of the context of longer works, these excerpts become
self-contained narratives and singular artworks. Farm workers in
revolutionary Cuba move from shack to chic, Truman Capote introduces
Kansan friends to New York’s Fifth Avenue, and Marlon Brando flirts his
way through a spree of female interviewers, all through the Maysles’
poetic eye.

The program will also include selections from the Maysles’ impressive body
of commercial work, which they undertook in order to finance their feature
films. These commercials extend the conversation about cinema beyond the
screen, which masks the process and cost of production, to create simple,
poetic snapshots of everyday consumers. These clips exhibit the same
empathy, technique and care apparent in all Maysles films, and stand in
stark contrast to the exhaustedly produced, focus-group-oriented
television ads one sees today.

Many of the shorts, out-takes and commercials in this special program have
never before been screened in Chicago, and rarely even around the world.

Read an excerpt from the STOP SMILING interview with Albert Maysles, from
the Documentary Issue here.

Receive a copy of the STOP SMILING Documentary Issue at the screening with
a $5 donation.

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SNAPSHOTS
Curated by Beth Capper and STOP SMILING
This screening was made possible by Maysles Films Inc.

Tuesday, May 12, 7:00 p.m.
at the STOP SMILING Storefront
1371 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL

Program run-time: approx. 1 hour