D.A Pennebaker

This 5 min short from 1953 is the earliest known work by D.A Pennebaker - a 'City Symphony' style montage set to Duke Ellington's Daybreak Express of the Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York.

Pennebaker went on to become one of the most important documentary filmmakers of the late 20th century. A pioneer of Direct Cinema; observational documentary making that showed real life unfolding in a truthful manner captured without drawing the subject's attention to the camera.

His most famous work was the 1967 film Dont Look Back, following Bob Dylan on his 1965 tour of the UK. The film starts with one of the earliest music videos, then called promotional film clips, for Subterranean Homesick Blues - the iconic single take of Dylan standing in an alleyway holding up cue cards of the songs lyrics.

Daybreak Express// D.A Pennebaker