Part of Dialogues & Film Retrospectives

William Klein, Who Are You Polly Maggoo?, 1966.

William Klein is an American filmmaker and internationally recognized photographer who has lived and worked in Paris since the late 1940s. As Klein was setting the photography world on fire with groundbreaking work in Vogue, he also turned his creative energy to filmmaking. His debut, Broadway by Light (1958), is regarded by some as the first pop film. The director went on to produce documentaries, Cassius le Grand (1965), Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee (1969), and Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther (1970),  while also making feature films such as Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966), which won the Prix Jean Vigo at the Cannes Film Festival, and the antiwar satire Mr. Freedom (1970). His body of work has included numerous photography publications and hundreds of television commercials. William Klein and Paulina del Paso, filmmaker and associate programmer for FICCO 2009 (Festival Internacional de Cine Contemporáneo de la Ciudad de México) sat down for an in-depth conversation about Klein’s creative process, illuminated by film clips, anecdotes, and personal insights. Recorded in 2009.

• Broadway by Light
• Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?)
• Mr. Freedom
• Muhammad Ali, The Greatest
• Panafrican Festival
• Messiah (Le Messie)

William Klein has spent six decades producing works that are raw, direct, and confrontational. As an artist, he has resisted categorization and worked within and across many mediums. His vision embraces a moral conscience and a passion for discord, and his films fall into two disparate but complementary categories: eviscerating social satires and illuminating documentaries. It is mostly through the latter that he betrays his fascination with outsiders—both heroes and outlaws.

Born in 1928 into a Jewish family living in an Irish neighborhood in New York, Klein grew up alienated from mainstream culture. After two years overseas in the U.S. army, he was discharged in France, where he has lived and worked since 1948. His varied career has included studying painting with Fernand Léger at the Sorbonne and shooting fashion spreads for U.S. Vogue. His book New York (Life Is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels) (1956) broke many photographic rules and changed the medium; street photography flourished in its wake. Klein’s directorial debut, the impressionistic Broadway by Light (1958), has been called the first pop film. His first feature-length documentary, Cassius le Grand (1965), received the Grand Prix du Festival International de Tours and was eventually recut with later footage from the fight with George Foreman in Zaire to make Muhammad Ali the Greatest (1974). His first feature film, the satirical Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966), was awarded the Prix Jean Vigo at the Cannes Film Festival.

Klein’s fierce independence is reflected in his work on numerous levels. He has been responsible for all that is displayed, printed, or screened, covering the graphic design and the photography of his books and also designing his films’ costumes, sets, and posters as well as writing their scripts and directing. The Walker produced the first U.S. tour of Klein’s films in 1989—Cinema Outsider: The Films of William Klein. In the past year, they have been the subject of several major retrospectives around the world. Such renewed interest in Klein’s filmography, along with the ever-increasing resonance of his critiques of America, from its consumerism to its foreign policy, prompts another look at his body of work. The Walker is pleased to welcome him back for the first time in 20 years.

─ Paulina del Paso