How to Smell a Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock in Normandy (NR)

synopsis

This film documents Les Blank's year 2000 visit with the legendary co-founder of Direct Cinema, Richard Leacock (1921-2011). At his farm in Normandy, France. Blank, and co-director Gina Leibrecht, recorded conversations with Leacock about his life, his work, and his other passion: cooking! In the early sixties, together with Robert Drew, D.A. Pennebaker, and the Maysles brothers, Leacock changed the way documentary films were made. Before then the standard way of making films involved heavy and cumbersome equipment—standing lights, tripods, cables, etc.—that limited the access the filmmakers had to their subjects.