Harlem, in Manhattan
Maysles Documentary Center
Documentary Cinema · 343 Malcolm X Blvd
Albert Maysles founded this Harlem documentary center in 2005, and its 60-seat cinema programs nothing but nonfiction, often with the filmmaker there to talk afterward.
Maysles and his wife Gillian Walker picked Harlem deliberately, to put consistent access to documentary film and to filmmakers above 96th Street, where it had not been taken for granted the way it was downtown. He died in 2015.
With his brother David he was an early practitioner of direct cinema, filming life as it unfolded without scripts, sets or narration. He received the National Medal of Arts in 2013.
The center's work started with a summer program for young people whose parents were incarcerated, and the organization pays the artists, speakers and educators who appear on its programs.
