The AFI-Discovery Channel SILVERDOCS Documentary Festival will honour Albert Maysles at the Charles Guggenheim Symposium, the centrepiece of the eight-day documentary festival that takes place in June outside Washington DC.

Maysles is widely recognised as a pioneer of “direct cinema” and regarded as one of America’s foremost non-fiction film-makers. The Symposium, named after the late, four-time Academy Award winner Charles Guggenheim, honours a film-maker who has mastered the power of documentary and inspires audiences with powerful explorations of the human experience.

SILVERDOCS artistic director Sky Sitney paid tribute to Maysles’ “vast contribution to cinema and the documentary form.”

Maysles has directed more than 35 films and was cinematographer on 64. His credits include Salesman, Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens, and more recently The Gates, his fifth collaboration with artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude that was co-directed by Antonio Ferrera.

Maysles is currently in production on In Transit, Scapegoat On Trial and Handheld And From The Heart.

As part of the Symposium, SILVERDOCS will screen a series of excerpts from Maysles’ body of work followed by an on-stage Q&A.

The festival runs from June 15-22.

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