Archive for March, 2015

This week I am teaching a camera storytelling workshop at the London Film School.  My students enrolled in the masters program here seem motivated and especially eager to embrace my lessons of life, business, and the camera craft.

For me offering such workshops at schools and universities around the world is a way of giving back.  My mentor, Albert Maysles, who died earlier this month at 88, made it a point every year to spend a few weeks sharing his prodigious expertise with aspiring young filmmakers.

I am grateful  to be able to follow in my mentor’s footsteps.

Vishen Lakhiani, the great entrepreneur and founder of MindValley in Kuala Lumpur, often speaks of the threes pillars of happiness. To find happiness  in our lives, he says, we need to have a wealth of experiences. We need to feel we’re growing each day.  And we need to know we are contributing in some way, somehow, to the betterment of others.

London Film School Camera & Visual Storytelling Workshop with Barry Braverman 20 March 2015

My mentor Albert Maysles died yesterday at the age of 88.

I will remember him fondly.

In 1976 Albert Maysles urged me to make Murita Cycles, a film about my very unconventional dad. He said the best documentaries are made by folks who are the closest to their subjects.

At the time Al was riding the trains around America carrying his modified 16mm Auricon and tiny (for its time) Nagra SN recorder. Utilizing his direct cinema approach he wanted to capture strangers meeting and getting to know each other on their respective journeys.

I don’t think he ever completed that project but he sure did complete many other great works.

I will miss him. He was a great filmmaker and a great source of inspiration in my life.

Albert Maysles (right) with his brother David, in the 1970s.