A special eye for capturing reality

Budding documentarians and fans of the genre will want to find a way to the second annual Plymouth Independent Film Festival this week, which runs Thursday through Sunday. It's hosting a major gathering of the pioneers of cinema verite -- including Richard Leacock, Albert Maysles, Robert Drew, and D.A. Pennebaker -- and a number of the folks they influenced, including Glorianna Davenport, Robb Moss, and Michel Negroponte. The event will also feature a broad variety of panel discussions, director-led workshops, and screenings.

The festival will honor Leacock, whose documentary subjects over the years have included John F. Kennedy, Isabella Stewart Gardner, painter Maud Morgan, and director John Huston. Leacock turns 85 this week and will be visiting from his home in Paris, where he moved after teaching film at MIT for nearly 20 years beginning in the late 1960s.

``The film section at MIT, when it was formed, was really a very special place," says Davenport, who studied under Leacock and now runs the Media Fabrics film group at MIT's Media Lab, and who helped curate the program. ``Ricky's style of documentary was to figure out why people do what they do. It depended on capturing the actions and activities of people in situ. It's different than much of the documentary you see on TV today, a lot of which depends on interviews."

Most film festival honorees swoop in briefly for an event or two, but Leacock is all over the Plymouth schedule. On Thursday he'll present awards to teen filmmakers before the opening night reception. Friday he'll lead a two-hour master class and introduce two film programs. Saturday he'll lead a panel discussion about the state of documentary filmmaking and attend the evening's awards ceremony and reception. And Sunday he'll introduce his portraits of opera director Sarah Caldwell (``A Musical Adventure in Siberia") and Louise Brooks (``Lulu in Berlin").

With so many film festivals competing for attention, it's good to see a young one with a clear focus. In addition to bringing together so many key documentarians, the festival will show a number of their films, which include some of the classics of the past 50 years: Drew's collaboratively produced look at Kennedy campaigning against Hubert Humphrey in Wisconsin in ``Primary"; Drew's snapshot of Kennedy at work after the election, in ``Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment"; Pennebaker's concert film ``Monterey Pop" and 1967 profile of Bob Dylan, ``Don't Look Back"; and Maysles's portrait of Edith and Edie Bouvier Beale's life of decay, in ``Grey Gardens."

The festival will also show some fiction al films, including free screenings at the Plymouth waterfront of ``Casablanca " on Friday and ``Raiders of the Lost Ark " on Saturday.

Many of the festival's events and screenings will be held at the Plimoth Plantation, with additional programs at other venues in Plymouth. To get the full schedule, go to www.plyfilmfest.org or call 508-801-2530.

VINEYARD HAPPENINGS: If you're lucky enough to be on Martha's Vineyard this summer, there are a couple of interesting film events. The Martha's Vineyard Independent Film Festival, which hosts its main event every March, is presenting a summer film series on Wednesdays through Aug. 23. Among the films and filmmakers , who will take questions after the screenings: ``An Inconvenient Truth," with director Davis Guggenheim and producer Laurie David; ``This Film Is Not Yet Rated," with director Kirby Dick; the Academy Award-nominated ``Street Fight," with director Marshall Curry; and the children's film ``Pelican Man," with Finnish director Liisa Helminen. The schedule is at www.mviff.org, or call 508-693-0396.

Also on the Vineyard, ``Jaws" will be shown on Aug. 5 as part of the Netflix Rolling Roadshow, which is screening movies in the places where they were filmed. (Others in the series: ``Field of Dreams," which will be shown in ``left and center field" at the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa, and ``The Poseidon Adventure," on the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, Calif.) Singer Lisa Loeb will host the event; details at www.netflix.com/roadshow.

SCREENINGS OF NOTE: The Boston French Film Festival continues at the Museum of Fine Arts through next Sunday . Among this week's films is the comedy ``When Angels Interfere," Crystel Amsalem's feature debut about a young Jewish woman second-guessing her upcoming marriage. The film is co-presented by the Boston Jewish Film Festival and plays today at 5:15 p.m. and again on Thursday at 2:15 p.m.

Also part of the festival is 76-year-old Claude Chabrol's 2006 ``Comedy of Power," a political drama about a judge (Isabelle Huppert) whose investigation into corporate corruption unearths a world of political bribery. The story echoes the real-life scandal in France involving oil company Elf Aquitaine five years ago. ``Comedy of Power" plays Friday at 6 p.m. (617-267-9300 and www.mfa.org/film).

The documentary ``Rex Trailer's `Boomtown,' " with a guest visit by the former children's television show cowboy himself, plays Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway in Somerville on Wednesday. The movie features interviews with Trailer fans including Mayor Thomas Menino, Jay Leno, and Steven Wright. The event kicks off at 6 p.m. with barbecue from Redbones, photos and autographs with Trailer, and Michael Bavaro's film at 7:30 p.m. Serving as host is Tingle, who once appeared on ``Boomtown," which ran from the mid-1950s to the mid-'70s on WBZ-TV (Channel 4). For more information, call 617-591-1616 or go to www.jtoffbroadway.com .

Music documentaries this week: ``Rock That Uke," with a live performance by the ukulele band Mai Tai Serenaders, tomorrow at the Coolidge Corner Theatre (617-734-2500 and www.coolidge.org) and ``Moro No Brasil," about the roots of Brazilian music, on Thursday and Friday at the Regent Theatre in Arlington (781-646-4849 and www.regenttheatre.com).

The Brattle Theatre starts a Tuesday night series of rare film noirs this week, boasting that almost none of the films is available on video. This Tuesday it's a double feature of ``Pushover" (1954), with Fred MacMurray and Kim Novak, and ``Nightfall" (1956), based on a David Goodis novel, with Anne Bancroft and Aldo Ray (617 876-6837 and www.brattlefilm.org).

Also at the Brattle, starting Friday and running through July 24, is the area premiere of Sarah Watt's ``Look Both Ways," a sort of love story about a woman and a man dealing with death and bad luck. The Australian Film Institute gave the film awards for best picture, best director, best supporting actor, and best original screenplay last October.

Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com.