Director: Barbara Kopple Producers: Barbara Kopple, Cecilia Peck, Linda Saffire
Description:
An
intimate portrait of the legendary actor and humanitarian, known for
his integrity and for standing up against racism, anti-semitism and
inequality. In 1999, Gregory Peck (1916-2003) visits the Barter
Theatre, Abingdon, VA, where he had acted in 1940 and where this
evening he tells stories and answers questions about his career.
Interspersed are clips from Peck's films and from interviews recorded
over the years and vérité contemporary footage of visiting with his
daughter Cecilia before and after the birth of her son, receiving the
National Medal of Arts, chatting with Lauren Bacall and Martin
Scorsese, and dining with Jacques Chirac, always with his wife of
forty-four years, Veronique Passani, beside him. Throughout, Peck is
informal, candid, and wry.
Biography: Barbara
Kopple is best known for
her documentaries, two of which are Oscar winners: 1976's Harlan
County, USA and 1990's American Dream.
Her first important gig was as part of the Winter Soldier Collective,
a group of filmmakers who recorded the testimony of returning Vietnam
War veterans. She then spent nearly four years with coal miners in
Harlan County, Kentucky, recording the effects of a bitter
thirteen-month strike. The sympathetic record of workers fighting big
business earned an Oscar in 1977 for best documentary, and has since
been chosen for the US National Film Registry by the Library of
Congress. Known for the "direct cinema" style of
documentaries—edited
footage without commentary—Kopple
has also directed episodic television, commercial spots and a feature
film (2005's Havoc,
starring Anne
Hathaway and Channing
Tatum). Kopple's other documentaries include Wild
Man Blues (Woody
Allen's European jazz tour, 1998), A
Conversation with Gregory
Peck, Shut
Up and Sing (The
Dixie Chicks and politics, 2006) and Woodstock:
Now & Then.
