Richard Leacock


Leacock was born in London on 18 July 1921. Leacock grew up on his
father's banana plantation in the Canary Islands until being sent to
boarding schools in England at the age of eight. He took up photography
with a glass plate camera, built a darkroom and developed his pictures,
but was not satisfied. At age 11 he was shown a silent film Turk-Sib
about the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway. He was stunned, and
said to himself "All I need is a cine-camera and I can make a film that
shows you what it is like to be there". At the age of 14 he wrote,
directed, filmed and edited Canary Bananas (10 min. 16mm, silent), a
film about growing bananas, but it did not, in his opinion, give you
"the feeling of being there". He was educated at Dartington Hall School
from 1934-38, alongside Robert Flaherty's daughters, and where David
Lack (Life of the Robin) taught biology. Having filmed in the Canary
Islands and then in the Galapagos Islands (1938-9) for ornithologist
David Lack's expedition, he moved to the USA and majored in Physics at
Harvard in order to master the technology of filmmaking. Meanwhile he
worked as cameraman and assistant editor on other peoples films, notably
To Hear Your Banjo Play (1941), filming a folk music festival atop a
mountain in south Virginia where there was no electricity, with a 35mm
studio camera and 35mm optical film sound recorder using batteries in a
large truck, a rare achievement at that time. Three years as a combat
photographer in Burma and China were followed by 14 months as cameraman
on Robert Flaherty's Louisiana Story. In the meantime, Leacock had
married Eleanor "Happy" Burke in 1941. Daughter of the world-famous
literary critic, philosopher, and writer Kenneth Burke, she had studied
at Radcliffe College, but graduated from Barnard in New York City. The
Leacocks had four children together. After ethnographic fieldwork with
the Innu (Montagnais-Naskapi) of Labrador, Eleanor Leacock (1922-1987)
earned her doctorate in anthropology at Columbia University (1952). Ten
years later, after her marriage broke up, she went on to become a
pioneering feminist anthropologist.

Film submission

26° Festival

CINEMAMBIENTE

05 June - 11 June 2023
TORINO

Competition registration

 

CINEMAMBIENTE

 
JUNIOR

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