A sure path to a hit documentary is a subject as brilliant, dynamic and charismatic as musician extraordinaire, Jon Batiste. Filmmaker Matthew Heineman, accepting the Pennebaker Career Achievement Award at Hamptons DocFest this week, told a rapt audience in Sag Harbor how he made his latest film, AMERICAN SYMPHONY, about Batiste on a musical, emotional journey.
When he scored THE FIRST WAVE, Heineman’s harrowing glimpse of a hospital ward at the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020 seen through the life and death ordeals of several New York families, Jon Batiste talked about preparing an “American Symphony” to be performed at Carnegie Hall. Heineman began filming the original composition’s process, but soon pivoted to the deeper drama of Jon Batiste’s life. His wife, writer Suleika Jaouad’s leukemia had returned after 10 years in remission. She would undergo a bone marrow transplant as Batiste won five Grammy awards. At one point he’s cradling the statuettes; in another he’s holding her, hair shaved, tubes protruding. Heineman’s camera gets up close and personal—for 62 straight days of shooting. The viewer actually feels the emotion that fuels the art.
As with his oeuvre to date, Heineman’s portrait of this loving relationship stands with his films of courage, even danger. He has embedded with troops in Afghanistan and drug lords in Mexico. War—dire circumstance-- seems to be his thing. “Fear drives me a lot,” he said, and he could relate to Batiste’s unwavering care for his wife because his father, who attended the event, had battled cancer. The hardest part was sneaking into the Grammy Awards and filming on his iphone, he said. But as to the art of film, D. A. Pennebaker’s classic DON’T LOOK BACK, an unvarnished look at Bob Dylan back in the day, guided him.
Besides Jon Batiste, other outsized personalities featured at this content-and-narrative rich non-fiction festival included The Hite Report author Shere Hite, writer Rose Styron, pioneer in dance, stage lighting and design, Loie Fuller, American photographer George Platt Lynes, German artist Anselm Kiefer, “Lambchops” creator/ puppeteer Shari Lewis, television newsman Dan Rather—to name a few.
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