The Smoke Screen is often out and about soaking up film knowledge through Q&As and pre-film lectures, so the Lexi’s Cinema’s ‘Film School’ series of screenings preceded by prominent film speakers is right up the proverbial alley. Last week The Lexi’s LSF screening was a milestone in the documentary genre: Grey Gardens. Directed by the quartet of Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer and the Maysles brothers (AKA Albert and David), the 1975 doc explores the unbelievable but true story of Mrs. Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie, the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and what years of retreating into a life of secluded eccentricity behind the walls of their decaying 28-room east Hampton’s mansion has done to them. Mother and daughter live in a world of their own behind towering privets that have basically isolated “Grey Garden,” from the world; a place so far gone that the local authorities once threatened to evict them for violating building and sanitation codes.
The incident made national headlines given Beales were from the American upper crust. Mrs. Beale, a.k.a. “Big Edie,” was a born aristocrat, sister of “Black Jack” Bouvier, Jackie O’s father. “Little Edie” was an aspiring actress who put her New York life on hold to care for her mother – and seems to have never left her side again. The filmmakers took their camera into the Grey Gardens mansion, and as unobtrusively as possible, sat and watched this strange, co-dependent relationship veer all over the place, from little Edie dropping bags of bread into the attic to feed the masses of racoons that had settled in, the Big Edie and Little Edie having endlessly shrill and circular rows about who ruined who’s life. The film has gone on to be a touchstone for discussing what documentary is, the ethics of filmmaking, and the extent to which the director, editor, and even the subjects are the “filmmakers”.
Those were just some of the issues speaker Sophie Brown (critic and programmer and producer of DocTooth) was interested in raising before the screening. #LexiFilmSchool takes place on Monday evenings. Tickets are £8 (£6 to Lexi members), with a reduced price of £20 when all 4 titles are booked at the same time. It is worth pointing out that, in addition to the speaker and the film, ticket buyers get additional information emailed to them before the evening: short film notes, links to further reading, and a few suggested ‘if you like this, then…’ titles.
See the Lexi Website for more information. It really will be worth your time. Sophie Brown tweets as @SBrown400.