Happy Mother's Day
Don't Look Back
One of the key figures in the evolution of the modern American documentary film, Leacock began his career as a cameraman for Robert Flaherty and went on to help launch the cinéma vérité revolution. His A Happy Mother’s Day takes an amused look at the media circus created by the birth of quintuplets to the Fisher family in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Realizing that he (and partner Joyce Chopra) are part of the problem, Leacock shifts attention from the babies themselves to the mix of happiness and hypocrisy emanating from the family’s entrepreneurial neighbors.
This fascinating document by one of the pioneers of vérité filmmaking captures the metamorphosis of the young Bob Dylan from folk singer to rock star as his tour moves through a rather gray and unswinging England in 1965. Dark shades firmly in place, Dylan parries and thrusts with square interviewers, jokes with Joan Baez and Donovan, and chuckles over the "anarchist" tag hung on him by the British press. Filmed with a restless hand-held camera, this is a portrait of the artist as an opaque young man.