Tributes

Director, producer, editor, and cinematographer, Leon Gast’s long career is as quirky and colorful as the man himself. Best known for his Academy Award–winning documentary When We Were Kings, about the epic boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, he won Best Director of a Documentary (2010/ Sundance Film Festival) for Smash his Camera, about paparazzo Ron Galella. Before becoming a filmmaker, Gast was a photographer for Esquire, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. As a documentarian, Gast also directed The Grateful Dead Movie (with Jerry Garcia), Hells Angels, Manny, Our Latin Thing (Nuestra Cosa), Celia Cruz and the Fania Allstars in Africa, B.B. King - Sweet 16, One Love, Soul Power, and executive-produced The Trials of Muhammad Ali. Gast received the Woodstock Film Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. SPECIAL SCREENING WHEN WE WERE KINGS

Directed by Leon Gast USA / 1996 / 86 minutes Bearsville Theater WOODSTOCK Fri Oct 14:45pm

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PRESENTER: JEFF KUSAMA-HINTE

Jeff Kusama-Hinte, editor of When We Were Kings, is the president of Antidote Films and the producer of numerous award-winning films, including The Kids are Alright (Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture), Mysterious Skin, The Hawk Is Dying, Chain, Thirteen, Laurel Canyon, Wendigo, American Saint, Soul Power, Fading Gigolo, The Last Winter, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, and Limon, among others. American television editor Lewis Erskine is known for his great work on Freedom Riders (for which he won a Primetime Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Program in 2011 and Best Edited Documentary in 2012), Unscrewed, and Waging a Living. During his long career, he collaborated with such great directors as Stanley Nelson (including Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool), Ken Burns, Shola Lynch, Michael Moore, Walter Cronkite, and Bill Moyers. His work aired on American Masters, POV, Independent Lens, Now on PBS, and American Experience, helping to establish PBS as the goto destination for quality documentary films. In 2020, BPM chose Erskine among its 40th Anniversary Black Media Game Changers.

SPECIAL SCREENING MILES DAVIS: Birth of the Cool

Directed by Stanley Nelson Jr. USA / 2019 / 66 minutes Bearsville Theater WOODSTOCK Sun Oct 32:30pm

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PRESENTER STANLEY NELSON

Stanley Nelson is today’s leading documentarian of the African-American experience. Awards include a MacArthur Fellowship, five Primetime Emmys, lifetime achievement awards from the Emmys and IDA, and the National Medal in the Humanities from President Obama. Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool was nominated for Grammy’s Best Music Film (2019). Crack: Cocaine, Conspiracy, & Corruption debuted on Netflix in 2021. With his wife, Marcia Smith, he co-founded Firelight Media, a non-profit dedicated to advancing social justice and fostering a generation of diverse filmmakers.