American filmmaker/cinematographer Richard Leacock made a major contribution to the development of the American version of "cinema verite" called "Direct Cinema." As enacted by Leacock and Robert Drew, Direct Cinema attempted to utilize the camera only as a means to objectively record events as they happened without subjecting it to pre-planned direction or much care for the resulting technical quality of the finished product. What was important was to capture the now, just as it happened without the interference of the director and the crew. Typically, Leacock and the others involved in the movie travelled to events with minimal equipment and carried hand-held cameras.
The younger brother of feature filmmaker Philip Leacock, Richard began making his first films at age 14 while living in Britain (he was born a British citizen in the Canary Islands). Three years later he moved to the States, earned a physics degree at Harvard and participated in WW II as a combat cameraman for the army. He got his professional start in 1948 working as a cameraman and associate producer for Robert Flaherty on the dramatized documentary classic Louisiana Story (1948). Leacock went on to collaborate with a few more documentary makers, including Louis de Rochemont, before creating his own production company, Drew Associates, in 1958 with Robert Drew and making television documentaries. He and Drew started the Direct Cinema movement with their innovative Living Camera series wherein they would unobtrusively as possible record such events as the 1960 Wisconsin primary between JFK and Hubert Humphrey (Primary) or a man on death row preparing for the electric chair (Chair). Not only did Leacock, Drew and other collaborators such as D. A. Pennebaker and Al Maysles record major events, they also experimented with chronicling more mundane things. Later he founded the film department at MIT, which he also headed. His son Robert has also become a filmmaker.
