NEW MOVIE PREVIEW: Documentary “The Gates”
Last night marked the television premiere of a 2005 documentary by the legendary Maysles Brothers: The Gates, the tale behind the enormous fabric-paneled steel art installation created by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in Central Park, New York.
Albert and David Maysles began filming the artists’ passionate process back in 1979, chronicling initial opposition and bureaucratic fear (Art in the park?! Prevent it before it spirals out of control!) to a post-9/11 welcoming of anything to make New York thrive again. The Maysles are known for “direct cinema,” in which the filmmakers constrain themselves to only film events as they unfold — no narration, no interviews, no artificial sets. Their only aim: Alllow the uncontrolled subject to take the movie where it should go.
It appears to be the perfect match: Controversial artists creating massive installations (wrapped Reichstag, anyone?) and the controversial pioneers of “direct cinema” who filmed (and have been accused of staging) the fatal, out-of-control Rolling Stones concert in Gimme Shelter. Indeed, this is not the first time the Maysles worked with Christo and Jeanne-Claude. They filmed the hanging of a fabric wall between two Colorado mountains in Christo’s Valley Curtain, the wrapping of a Seine River bridge in Christo in Paris, and the building of a 24.5 mile fabric fence that spanned the hills of California in Running Fence.
The Gates took 26 years and 7,503 orange (saffron, technically) fabric panels to cover Central Park’s snowy walkways with bright flowing canopies — for only 16 days. A nuisance? Pointless? A beautiful statement? An experience and sight to see, for sure. I saw it from a crowded bus and it made those 10 minutes of standstill traffic the most enjoyable I’ve ever experienced. (Sadly, David Maysles passed away in 1987, eighteen years before the paths full of orange fabric were to be seen by the public.)
Regardless of how you feel about The Gates, you have to respect an artist that accepts no money or sponsors to fund installations to prevent art falling to the whims and compromises of others. And you have to love a filmmaker that lists 30 reasons why he uses a certain camera and lists the do’s and dont’s of documentary filmmaking. These passions come together in The Gates.
See The Gates information on HBO.com
Discuss The Gates — the art installation and the movie
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