Weekend Tribute to Honor Director Richard Leacock

The American Cinematheque’s “A Weekend With Richard Leacock,” Friday through Sunday at the Directors Guild, 7920 Sunset Blvd., pays tribute to a giant of the cinema who would undoubtedly be more famous had he not chosen to spend his life working in the documentary form. Leacock will be present throughout the event.

Whether serving as a cinematographer for others--for example, Robert Flaherty’s 1946 “Louisiana Story”--or making his own films, Leacock seems instinctively to have known how to use the camera with the least fuss and maximum immediacy. His 12-minute “Canary Bananas,” a promotional film sponsored by his father’s company and made in 1935 when Leacock was only 14, could not be a more clear and economical depiction of the way a Canary Island banana plantation functions.

Leacock’s work has ranged gracefully from the socially conscious to the personal and he has captured memorably with his camera everyone from Stravinsky to ex-convict Piri Thomas to Louise Brooks. Clearly he has the gifts of inspiring trust and of seeming inconspicuous. Leacock says simply that his primary goal has always been to try to convey to an audience what it was like “to be there.”

Not all the films to be shown were available for preview, such as “The Chair” (1960), about a fight to save a convicted killer from execution; “Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment” (1962), a record of John and Robert Kennedy’s confrontation with Gov. George Wallace over the admission of blacks to the University of Alabama, and “Primary” (1960), in which he had unique access to John F. Kennedy’s campaign against Hubert Humphrey for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Among those films that could be previewed were some knockouts: “Community of Praise” (1982), “Petey & Johnny” (1961), “One-PM” (1968), “Chiefs” (1969), “A Stravinsky Portrait” (1964), “Lulu in Berlin” (1984) and “Happy Mother’s Day” (1963).

Produced for the acclaimed “Middletown” series and made with Marisa Silver, “Community of Praise” (Saturday at 4 p.m.), which will be shown in Leacock’s own cut, reveals the transforming impact of fundamental Christianity upon a troubled Muncie, Ind., couple and the larger, equally devout community to which they and their children belong. It’s a remarkably nonjudgmental work.

“Petey & Johnny” (Saturday at approximately 8:15 p.m.) is a poignant, gritty and vital account of Piri Thomas and his ceaseless dedication in working with Spanish Harlem gangs to try to persuade them to avoid making the same mistakes he made. Arguably the key discovery of the weekend and a true time-capsule film, “One-PM” (Saturday at 9:45 p.m.) is a deft 90-minute edit by D.A. Pennebaker of footage that he and Leacock shot for a film abandoned by Jean-Luc Godard.

Marked by shots of shimmering fluidity, it shows Godard interviewing such late ‘60s icons as Tom Hayden and Eldridge Cleaver, with Rip Torn playing a Don Quixote-like tilter at windmills; there’s even a Manhattan rooftop concert--soon broken up by the cops--by the Jefferson Airplane. It will be followed by “Chiefs,” an amusing but also unsettling account of a Hawaii convention of 3,500 police chiefs and their wives.

In “A Stravinsky Portrait” (Sunday at 2:30 p.m.), the late composer emerges as a shrewd, sophisticated charmer who in old age retains a youthful passion for work. “Lulu in Berlin” (Sunday at 5 p.m.), which Leacock made with Susan Woll, is a wonderful, incisive 51-minute reminiscence with the brilliant and outspoken Louise Brooks, who vividly recalls in her sparse Rochester, N.Y., apartment, her legendary collaborations with G.W. Pabst, “Pandora’s Box” and “Diary of a Lost Girl.”

It will be followed by “Happy Mother’s Day,” which reveals with humor and compassion how a plain Midwestern couple and their small town cope with their quintuplets; a sequel is in the works.

“A Weekend With Richard Leacock” opens Friday at 7 p.m. with some of Leacock’s most recent work in video, highlighted by “Les Oeufs a la Coque de Richard Leacock,” a kind of diary/sketchbook of the everyday pleasures of French life, urban and rural, made with Leacock’s companion-collaborator Valerie Lelonde.

Information: (213) 466-FILM.