Albert Maysles

From paulmccartney.com, March 11, 2015:

I was so sad to hear of the death of my friend and work colleague Albert Maysles.

I first met him on The Beatles’ first trip to America. He and his brother, David, were the camera team assigned to cover our exploits during this first trip. The style was very innovative at that time and sometimes referred to as cinéma vérité. They were attached to each other by what seemed to us to be like an umbilical cord linking straight from Albert’s camera to David’s sound recording equipment. When we would ask them if there was anything they wanted us to do, they simply replied, ‘Be yourselves, act naturally and ignore us completely’. The results of their work was a beautiful and fascinating film ‘What’s Happening! The Beatles In The U.S.A.’  which captures the innocence, intimacy, good humour and, what was for us, one of the most exciting things that had happened in our lives.

After David passed away, I kept in touch with Albert and was lucky enough to work with him again on another film covering ‘The Concert For New York City’, which we put on in the aftermath of 9/11. As always, he was a great pleasure to work with and always had a mischievous twinkle in his eye. The film came out – ‘The Love We Make’ – and was a loving record of these difficult times and the emotion released by the concert and events surrounding it.

Albert, it was a pleasure to know you and thanks from all of us who did simply love you.

Film directed by Albert Maysles