Pennebaker Hegedus Films

10/20/2022

A happy memory of Chris, Penny and Steve at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival with Unlocking the Cage!

Join me this doctober in celebrating Sundance Institute’s 20th anniversary of the Documentary Film Program supporting urgent storytelling, building community for artists, and developing fearless projects from global storytellers. sundance.org/support/donate

10/11/2022

This Sunday The Quiet Epidemic is at the Hamptons International Film Festival!

09/12/2022

"Documentary Now ... and Forever" is starting this Week at IFC Center​, a series of classic documentaries paired with their hilarious Documentary Now​ parodies. Catch Original Cast Album: Company Paired with Original Cast Album: Co-Op and The War Room paired with The Bunker, tickets available now!

Created by Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers and Rhys Thomas, the landmark series Documentary Now! premiered on IFC in 2015. Introduced by Helen Mirren and winkingly posing as a long-running program that stretches back decades, the show has been lovingly paying tribute to documentary classics fo...

06/17/2022

55 years ago The Monterey Pop Festival took place in California. Thanks to Lou Adler and D A Pennebaker for capturing all the dynamic performances so that we can still enjoy them today.

https://bestclassicbands.com/monterey-pop-festival-55th-anniversary-interviews-6-9-22/

03/25/2022

The next agricultural revolution is here. Watch now On Demand in the US and Select Territories!

Directed by Liz Marshall & narrated by Jane Goodall, the award-winning documentary is the world’s film about the game-changing climate solution of cultivated meat. Learn more at www.meatthefuture.com/watch.

02/17/2022

Sorry to hear about Seymour Wishman. Indie Films were in his DNA He distributed two of our films, Kings of Pastry and Unlocking the Cage. First Run Features was a pleasure to work with. Condolences to his family and everyone at at FRF.

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11/11/2021

Tickets for the DOC NYC screening of THE ENERGY WAR PART TWO FILIBUSTER are available now here! https://www.docnyc.net/film/the-energy-war-filibuster/

https://filmmakermagazine.com/112559-there-are-so-many-parallels-between-what-went-on-then-and-trying-to-pass-bidens-spending-and-energy-bills-today-chris-hegedus-on-the-restoration-of-the-energy-war-part-two-filibuster-at-doc-n/ #.YY1TbOlKhTI

Click here to read our Fall 2021 issue, featuring this year's 25 New Faces of Film, B**g Joon-ho interviewing Last Night in Soho's Edgar Wright and more...

08/17/2021

Today is the day! The all new 4K restoration of Original Cast Album: Company is out from The Criterion Collection. Get your DVD or Blu-Ray today!

https://www.playbill.com/article/watch-elaine-stritch-sing-the-ladies-who-lunch-from-newly-remastered-original-cast-album-company-documentary

The Broadway documentary is released in HD for the first time August 17 from Criterion.

05/17/2021

An all new, restored 4K digital transfer of Original Cast Album: Company is coming soon on August 17th, 2021! Head on over to The Criterion Collection at the link below to reserve your copy today!

https://www.criterion.com/films/30212-original-cast-album-company?fbclid=IwAR2oSrjGGP3PLLhu8iJpQiwUJxDxLMEL4YXbiPXF2eoiRcTNefQdjzGQ50g

This holy grail for both documentary and theater aficionados offers a tantalizingly rare glimpse behind the Broadway curtain. In 1970, right after the triumphant premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s groundbreaking concept musical Company, the renowned composer and lyricist, his director Harold Prince, t...

03/31/2021

Congratulations to Liz Marshall, Janice Dawe, Chris Hegedus, and Meat the Future Film for being nominated for the 2021 Donald Brittain Award for Best Social/Political Documentary Program at the Canadian Screen Awards!

https://www.academy.ca/2021/meat-the-future/

2021 Canadian Screen Awards Nominee: Donald Brittain Award for Best Social/Political Documentary Program

07/20/2020

An excellent remembrance of Penny on his 95th birthday, we miss him dearly.

https://www.showbiz411.com/2020/07/15/remembering-lifetime-oscar-recipient-da-penneabaker-born-95-years-ago-today

Today DA Pennebaker (Oscar nominee, 1st ever documentary filmmaker to get an honorary Oscar) would have turned 95 years old. His massive, sprawling family would have gathered in Sag Harbor, Long Is…

07/13/2020

You can catch "Original Cast Album: Company" on the Criterion Channel now!

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/the-unstrung-power-of-elaine-stritch-in-original-cast-album-company

D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary, now streaming on the Criterion Channel, thrillingly illuminates three art forms.

04/26/2020

Congratulations to those who 50 years ago starred in the original production of Company and all those who made it through the grueling 18 hour cast album recording session. We are happy to announce that The Criterion Collection will be releasing the Blu-ray of 'Company: Original Cast Recording' within the next few months. Can't wait to sort through all the possible extras they will put on it. Does anyone have any ideas?

12/24/2019

Merry Merry!

https://vimeo.com/79209262

This short film was the first film I made with Robert Kennedy after his brother’s death. Robert Kennedy had decided to run for the New York Senate and was…

12/20/2019

Happy Holidays from Pennebaker Hegedus!

12/05/2019

Thank you to Hamptons Doc Fest for honoring D A Pennebaker this weekend in his beloved Sag Harbor.

https://indyeastend.com/arts/entertainment/a-tribute-to-penny/

“Find a story that you believe in and find a passionate subject. You just have to get out there and go do it,” Chris Hegedus said, a word of advice to filmmakers of today. “It’s like James Carville said in ‘The War Room’ — ‘Golf is a game of luck, the more I play, the …

10/09/2019

Thank you to Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema for honoring D A Pennebaker, if you are in the Toronto area try and stop by.

https://www.hotdocscinema.ca/c/da-pennebaker-tribute?_ga=2.196779503.291928001.1570639247-959209896.1570639247

D.A. Pennebaker, the master director who revolutionized the art of documentary with his canny, verité style, passed away this summer at the age of 94.

07/31/2019

A great interview with Booker T who backed Otis Redding at Monterey Pop for an amazing 20 minutes of music. Click the link and take a listen to Try a Little Tenderness!

https://bestclassicbands.com/booker-jones-mgs-interview-7-30-19/

"Black people thought it was a black band and white people thought it was a white band," says the keyboardist behind the soul classic "Green Onions."

05/01/2019

Hanging out with an old friend ... the DeLorean car at the Tribeca premiere of Framing John DeLorean.
Penny and I spent two years filming the birth of John's stainless steel sports car in Belfast, Northern Ireland to its debut in the USA.

04/25/2019

I am so proud to be a co-producer and a cinematographer on Cracked Up. Michelle Esrick's powerful documentary on Darrell Hammond and childhood trauma. Listen to this podcast with them.

Saturday Night Live veteran Darrell Hammond, filmmaker Michelle Esrick, and Mount Sinai psychologist Jacob Ham, PhD, discuss childhood trauma, complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and healing. (Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Pl...

03/27/2019

"Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: What is the best documentary about the American political system?"

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/03/best-documentaries-american-politics-1202051821/?fbclid=IwAR3jPDtESgFwbncQ9GUtXResiCIClHAJOqWySXvVbhlmCbGVREwU6kQ_7II

With the 2020 race heating up, and Beto O'Rourke launching his campaign with a film, our panel of critics picks the best documentaries about the American political system.

03/22/2019

Happy 89th birthday to Stephen Sondheim!

03/01/2019

Thom Powers' new episode of Pure Nonfiction is out now with Penny, Seth Meyers, John Mulaney, and more talking about Company and the new episode of Documentary Now. Listen at the link below.

http://www.purenonfiction.net/99-d-a-pennebaker-seth-meyers-john-mulaney-more-on-stephen-sondheims-company/

D.A. Pennebaker’s1970  documentary “Original Cast Album: Company” captures the dramatic recording session of the Stephen Sondheim

02/27/2019

Check out the new episode of Documentary Now, Original Cast Album: Co-op based on Original Cast Album: Company, premiering tonight on IFC!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/theater/original-cast-album-co-op-mulaney-meyers-sondheim.html

The tribute to a 1970 documentary about the musical “Company” is part of the third season of IFC’s “Documentary Now!”

01/25/2019

Happy birthday to Dean Jones (1/25/1931 - 9/1/2015), here is his "great, sensational" performance of Barcelona with Susan Browning from Company.

https://youtu.be/04zBxmsE7zw

Dean Jones and Susan Browning have a lovely duet in "Barcelona" from Sondheim's original 1970 production of "Company." This excerpt is from the highly recomm...

01/10/2019

Congratulations to Chefs Canonne and Pfeiffer on receiving the Fauteuil de l'Académie from the Académie Culinaire de France!

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/french-pastry-school-founders-recognized-for-lifetime-achievement-300775861.html

CHICAGO, Jan. 9, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- In a rare instance, the USA chapter of the Académie Culinaire de France, awarded the prestigious Fauteuil de l'Académie...

01/08/2019

Happy birthday to David Bowie, he would have been 72 today, we miss him dearly.

01/07/2019

Great note in the New York Times about the new episode of Documentary Now based on Company: Original Cast Album!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/arts/television/winter-tv-shows.html

A guide to the shows worth your time this season, also including “High Maintenance,” “Documentary Now!” and “Sex Education.”

12/19/2018

Congratulations to Lou Adler, with out whom Monterey Pop would not exist, and to Sam Moore, the heart and soul of Only the Strong Survive!

https://www.showbiz411.com/2018/12/19/grammy-lifetime-achievement-sam-dave-black-sabbath-dionne-warwick-george-clinton-billy-eckstine-donny-hathwaway

The Grammy Award Lifetime Achievement inductees have been announced. And what a gang. Perfection: Black Sabbath, George Clinton & Parliament-Funkadelic, Billy Eckstine, Donny Hathaway, Julio Ig…

12/12/2018

Monterey Pop was one of the 25 films chosen by The Library of Congress to be inducted into the National Film Registry. Not a bad 50th anniversary present!

https://www.showbiz411.com/2018/12/12/da-pennebakers-seminal-concert-film-monterey-pop-joins-the-750-movies-in-the-national-film-registry?fbclid=IwAR0v2_nesC6WOXp8cRW4tlpGVTiFgcYzNvADQDmxxdV4yJ3VFRksNV0O9zs

This morning at 3am the Library of Congress announced the new additions to the National Film Registry. There are now about 750 films in the registry, including the ones announced this morning. Lege…