Metropolitan if
Detroit's
11-
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Not everyone
who saw
"Gimme Shelter"
felt that Jagger
came across
sympathetically.
"Some people
have looked
at the
recalls Mai/sirs,
"and said, 'Gee,
he comes off as
such a jerk.
So impassive
and so ineffective
and so uncaring
about what's
taking pthce.'

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strophic event — an event that he fails
to fully comprehend or control.
When the filmmakers finished the
documentary, they hadn't yet gotten a
signed release from the Stones.
"Mick couldn't bring himself to give
us the release," Maysles says. "So obvi-
ously it wasn't a piece that he felt com-
fortable with." It would be six months
before the Stones finally relented.
For Maysles, seeing Gimme Shelter
again after 30 years — now with the
restoration of previously censored footage
— is a decidedly visceral experience.
"It has an immediacy, no question
about that. As I look at it, I notice my
body movements, my hands almost on
the controls of the camera. I'm zooming
in and out physically as well as visually."
Although Gimme Shelter remains his
most well loved documentary, Maysles
continues to use filmmaking to seek
our truths. Currently, he's making a
film about Mendel Beilis, the defen-
dant in one of the most infamous
blood-libel trials in history.
In 1913 iii Kiev, Beilis — a Jewish
mar, — was accused by the Czarist
government of ritually murdering a
Christian child and using his blood to
bake matzot.
It's somewhat of a departure for
Maysles — who has made numerous
films on art and artists — to focus on a
Jewish topic in his filmmaking. But his
emotional connection to the subject is
strong, and has roots in his youth.
"I owe a lot to my parents," he says.
Maysles' mother was a teacher and
civil rights worker. "In Brookline, she
couldn't get a teaching job because
they had never hired a Jew."
Maysles also speaks warmly of his
father's influence. "We used to go to shul
with him on the High Holidays. I know
what it is as a little kid to look up to my

father as he's praying, to hear that wonder-
ful cantorial music in the background."
But adversity was instrumental to
his development as well. "It strength-
ened my Judaism to have to suffer for
it," he says. "I got into fights almost
every day with Irish kids. I kind of
enjoyed the fights, somehow or other.
It was the only way that I could make
any contact with the outside forces."
Ultimately, filmmaking became a
more productive way to explore these
seemingly uncrossable boundaries.
Today, Maysles speaks enthusiastical-
ly about his work on the Beilis docu-
mentary: "I went to Kiev with my son,
with video cameras in our hands, and I
filmed in the courthouse where Beilis
was tried, and I filmed at the prison. I
filmed the tomb of the child [who] was
actually murdered by somebody else."
Honesty is a matter of principle for
Albert Maysles. "Fairness and truthful-
ness are a perfect combination for get-
ting at the emotions of the people that
you're filming," he explains.
But for all his cinematic objectivity,
compassion plays a crucial role, too.
"There's a great deal of loving in film-
ing the people we film," he admits.
Then, he shares a memory that
reveals a more personal point of view.
"When my mother was dying, she
came up with the epitaph to put on
her tombstone: 'Count on me as one
who loved her fellow man."' For
Ivlaysles, these are words to live by.

A restored version of the 1970
David and Albert Maysles/Charlotte
Zwerin documentary Gimme Shelter
screens 7:30 p.m. Monday March
19, at the Detroit Film Theatre. $6.
(313) 833-3237.

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