Albert Maysles

Albert Maysles was an American documentary filmmaker, born in 1926 and active until his death in 2015, who together with his brother David Maysles helped define the observational documentary style known as Direct Cinema. Working without narration, staged interviews or directorial intervention, the brothers filmed unfolding events as they happened, a technique later called the fly on the wall approach. Their most influential films include Salesman, released in 1969, a study of door to door Bible salesmen, Gimme Shelter from 1970, which captured the fatal 1969 Altamont Free Concert, and Grey Gardens from 1975, a portrait of two reclusive relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis living in a decaying East Hampton mansion. Albert Maysles continued making documentaries into his eighties, and his career is remembered as one of the clearest American examples of cinema verite practice applied to real subjects rather than staged drama.