{"id":2432,"date":"2019-08-06T14:57:03","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T18:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/?p=2432"},"modified":"2019-08-06T14:57:03","modified_gmt":"2019-08-06T18:57:03","slug":"d-a-pennebaker-1925-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2019\/08\/06\/d-a-pennebaker-1925-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"D.A. Pennebaker, 1925-2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t\n<p>D.A. Pennebaker, pioneer of American cinema verite and chronicler of 1960s counterculture, died this past weekend at the age of 94. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/bender-lib.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/08\/D_A_Pennebaker_2_by_David_Shankbone-1024x862.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2433\" width=\"269\" height=\"226\" \/><figcaption>Photo by David Shankbone via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Documentary filmmaking was not Pennebaker\u2019s first career,\nbut his formative experiences and skills uniquely prepared him to spearhead a\nnew type of documentary filmmaking. As a young man, he studied engineering at\nYale University, and then went on to found Electronics Engineering, where he\nhelped create the first computerized airline reservation system. It was only\nafter selling the company that he turned to filmmaking, and he directed his\nfirst film, <em>Daybreak Express,<\/em> in\n1953. Afterwards, he joined a filmmaking co-op and directed documentary shorts\nfor a wide variety of clients, most notably news magazine programs. During this\ntime, he and collaborator Robert Leacock invented one of the first portable\nsynchronous sound cameras. With this new technology, Pennebaker was able to get\nup close and personal with the subjects of his documentaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Though he made a name for himself with short\ndocumentaries, what put Pennebaker on the map was his groundbreaking 1967 film <em>Don\u2019t Look Back<\/em>. This film followed Bob\nDylan on his 1965 British tour, and captured the musician as he transitioned\nfrom his acoustic folk routes to electric rock and roll. &nbsp;It\u2019s considered by many to be the first rock\ndocumentary, and the opening sequence the first modern music video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pennebaker further cemented his status as counterculture\ndocumentarian with <em>Monterey Pop<\/em>,\nwhich chronicled the 1967 Monterey Pop festival. In this film, Pennebaker\ncaptured iconic performances from Janis Joplin, Jimmi Hendrix, and the Who.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pennebaker\u2019s fascination with music didn\u2019t end with the\n1960s. Throughout the latter part of the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century, Pennebaker\ncreated documentaries around or about David Bowie, John Lennon, the Broadway\nmusical <em>Company<\/em>, and my favorite\nsynth-pop band Depeche Mode. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He received just one Oscar nomination in 1994 for <em>The War Room<\/em>, a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Bill Clinton\u2019s 1992 presidential campaign. Though he didn\u2019t win, Pennebaker became the first documentarian to receive an honorary Oscar.  You can check out all of these D.A. Pennebaker titles from the Media Collection <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Don\u2019t Look Back (DVD 2281)<\/li><li>Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (DVD 150)<\/li><li>Primary (DVD 13485)<\/li><li> The War Room (DVD 1013) <\/li><li><\/li><li>Dance Black America (DVD 6024)<\/li><li>Timothy Leary\u2019s Wedding: You\u2019re Nobody til Somebody Loves You (Streaming)<\/li><li>Town Bloody Hall (Streaming)<\/li><li> Monterey Pop (Streaming) <\/li><\/ul>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>D.A. Pennebaker, pioneer of American cinema verite and chronicler of 1960s counterculture, died this past weekend at the age of 94. Documentary filmmaking was not Pennebaker\u2019s first career, but his formative experiences and skills uniquely prepared him to spearhead a new type of documentary filmmaking. As a young man, he studied engineering at Yale University, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}