It's hard to believe there's never been a full-on retrospective of documentarian Albert Maysles' work, and it's a shame that it took his death this past March for such a thing to occur, But better late than never! More than a dozen of his films from 1962 to 2011, many in collaboration with his brother David, will be shown over the course of a week. It's not the entirety of his filmography — that would take a few months — but it's a good sampling. They're all in double or occasionally triple features, since some are very short, such as the 10-minute Orson Welles in Spain from 1966 in which Welles turns a pitch for an improvised bullfighter film into a meditation on masculinity in modern cinema that's no less relevant today. 1970's Gimme Shelter, the chilling document of the 1969 Rolling Stones tour that ended in the hellish concert at Altamont, has been widely praised and is the subject of an extensive Criterion Collection release, but its triumphs and horrors are always best on the big screen. Also showing is the 2009 short film Get Yer Ya-Yas Out!, which features heretofore unseen footage from the Stones' 1969 Madison Square Garden show, but without the whiff of sulfur that hangs over Shelter.
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