Ground-breaking documentarian D.A. Pennebaker dies

By Richard Phillips 

10 August 2019

D.A. (Donn Alan) Pennebaker, one of the masters of American contemporary documentary filmmaking, died last week, a few weeks after his 94th birthday.

D A Pennebaker [Credit: David Shankbone]

Known as “Penny” to his family and colleagues, Pennebaker leaves behind a legacy of more than 40 films and an enormous archive of raw footage that hopefully will be seen in future releases by Chris Hegedus, his wife and life-long artistic collaborator.

Born in Illinois in 1925, the son of a commercial photographer, Pennebaker served in the Navy during World War II. After the war he studied and worked as an engineer before directing his first film—Daybreak Express—a five-minute work about a subway station in New York and set to music by Duke Ellington—in 1953.

As the 1998 article below explains, it was the beginning of a more than 60-year career and one that set new standards in documentary filmmaking. Pennebaker pioneered the use of handheld cameras and eschewed narrations or editorial comment to achieve an immediacy and closeness not previously achieved in documentary filmmaking.

With early collaborators—LIFE magazine editor and journalist Robert Drew and Richard Leacock—he developed “observational” political documentaries that in the beginning were sold to the television networks. Primary [1960], the first of these films, covered the Democratic primary race that year between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in Wisconsin.

The reserved and quietly spoken Pennebaker will probably be most remembered for his music documentaries, which charted the emergence of contemporary rock, particularly during the mid-1960s and early 1970s. These are important cultural records of that period.

Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop (1968), which includes electrifying performances by Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, the Mamas & the Papas, Jefferson Airplane, The Who and others, is a record of some of the best rock music moments of the era.

Behind-the-scenes tour footage and concerts by Bob Dylan (Don’t Look Back [1967]), John Lennon (Sweet Toronto [1971]) and David Bowie (Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars[1973]) and memorable performances by a long list of other musicians, including Depeche Mode, Little Richard and Chuck Berry, were filmed by Pennebaker.

The recipient of numerous awards, Pennebaker was given a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2013, in recognition of his contribution to documentary filmmaking. In the 1998 Sydney Film Festival article below, Pennebaker and Hegedus speak about their careers, filmmaking experiences and artistic influences.

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This is the last in the series of articles on the 45th Sydney Film Festival first published 12 August 1998.

“Pennebaker and Hegedus: Seminal figures in American documentary film”

American documentary filmmakers D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus were featured guests at this year’s Sydney Film Festival. The festival screened several of Pennebaker’s ground-breaking early films—Primary (1960), on the John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey battle for the Wisconsin primary; Jane (1962), about a Broadway musical; and the first-ever rock documentary, Don’t Look Back (1966), starring Bob Dylan.

Dont Look Back

In 1976, Pennebaker began his professional and personal relationship with Chris Hegedus. Hegedus, a camera operator at the University of Michigan Burns Unit, moved to New York in the mid-70s and began making avant-garde art films before meeting Pennebaker. During their twenty-year partnership, the two filmmakers have made scores of rock and jazz music films and several political documentaries including, The Energy War(1978), Town Bloody Hall (1979) and The War Room (1993). Many of these, including their most recent film, Moon over Broadway, a documentary on the production of a Broadway musical starring Carol Burnett, were screened at the festival.

Pennebaker is a seminal figure in modern American documentary filmmaking, and credited, along with Richard Leacock and Albert and David Maysles, as a founder of “direct cinema.”

“Direct cinema” emerged in the 1960s out of new developments in filmmaking technology. Lightweight, professional-quality 16-mm cameras and new sound recording equipment provided new mobility and high quality on-location sound. The invention of crystal synchronization in 1960 and later radio microphones made it possible for the camera and sound crew to cast off the restrictive cables that had tied them together like Siamese twins and hampered their movement. The invention of high-speed colour film in the late sixties and multi-tracking sound editing equipment further revolutionised documentary filmmaking.

“Direct cinema” provided a realism, honesty and immediacy not previously seen in documentaries. The new genre was defined not just by its technical finesse but a different aesthetic—its non-interventionist approach. There was no commentary or voice-over narration—people and events spoke for themselves. This to a great extent directed the evolution of each film.

Pennebaker and Hegedus introduced each of their films at the festival. I asked Pennebaker at one screening to comment on his first film, Daybreak Express:

Daybreak Express

“After I graduated from college, having done an engineering degree, I went back to my early sources—my records—and decided I would start making films with this music. I had no exact idea of what I wanted but I’d collected a lot of 78 jazz records in my youth. All the best jazz players were from Chicago but they were never played on the radio, so in order to hear them you had to buy what was known as ‘race records.’ RCA labelled these with a yellow label. You could get them for a nickel.

“Daybreak Express was my first film and was based on a Duke Ellington record. I knew Duke very slightly through a friend and I showed him the film. He said, ‘kid, you can have the record.’ In fact, he arranged with RCA for that.

“The film was made with a certain amount of youthful exuberance. It’s a short film, only five minutes, and is a ride on the elevators in the New York subway. The subway was laced with these elevators and wonderful pictures of laughing girls running through the snow and other images. It was just such an amazing collection of 20th century craziness.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/08/10/penn-a10.html