The weekly documentary series Stranger Than Fiction, curated by the Toronto Film Festival’s Thom Powers and hosted at Manhattan’s IFC Center, wrapped up its Spring 2008 season last night with a screening of two rarely seen films directed by Albert Maysles, a Q & A with the octogenarian documentarian, and the obligatory after-movie cocktail session. If the two films shown offered object lessons in Maysles’ combined talents––patience, negotiation, and an unfailing knack at taking advantage of serendipity––the discussion after the screening offered a glimpse into this independent artist’s ever-present conflict between his stated mission and the economic sacrifices that support it.

Before the screening, Maysles explained that the 13 minute Psychiatry in Russia, his first film, would have been a photo essay had he not ambled into the CBS building whilst in the neighborhood visiting Time/Life. Maysles said he walked into the television network’s New York headquarters and asked for Edward R. Murrow; Murrow was out, so Maysles ended up talking to the head of the news division. He walked out with a 16mm camera and an agreement that CBS would supply him with unlimited film stock, and then pay $1 per foot of developed film that they chose to use. CBS ended up buying just about a minute worth of footage shot by Maysles in a mental institution in Russia; the filmmaker walking away with $14 and the rights to the rest of reels, and walked straight into the PBS affiliate in Boston, where he negotiated access to an edit bay by offering to allow the station to broadcast the finished film for free.

Carrying a less remarkable story of behind-the-scenes hustle but packing a greater cinematic punch was the evening’s main event, Showman, the first film on which Albert collaborated with his brother David Maysles. Where Psychiatry resembles a newsreel with its comically dated, omnipresent narration, Showman uses just a sprinkling of Albert’s expository voiceover to set up transitions (”Is the movie business dying? There’s one man who doesn’t believe this talk –– or doesn’t listen.”) For the most part, Showman relies on the Maysles’ growing understanding that as documentarians, their job was to sit back and allow life to happen in front of their cameras. I’ve been trying to see Showman since first reading about it ten years ago––it’s not available on DVD and it rarely screens––an the Maysles portrait of B-movie producer Joseph Levine’s adventures in simultaneously selling a schlocky Hercules flick and an Oscar-winning Sophia Loren film didn’t disappoint. In fact, Levine’s knack for using the tactics of genre marketing to sell art films, combined with his determination to serve the masses in the face of critical incredulity, seems surprisingly relevant in light of the contemporary indie distribution situation.

“You finished the film, and it didn’t have distribution, but you didn’t seem discouraged,” Powers noted after the screening. “What were you thinking?”

Maysles smiled. “At that time, we were making so much money from doing commercials that we were able to put our own money into the films. Gimme Shelter, Salesman, Grey Gardens––all of those we paid for ourselves.”

Today, Maysles supports his filmmaking (at 82, he’s still working––last night he described a project-in-progress in which children age 4-6 interview each other, and also said he has plans to edit something out of the footage that resulted from a week in 1963 spent accompanying Orson Welles to bullfights in Madrid), as well as the non-profit community center he opened in Harlem in 2006 which offers filmmaking instruction and screenings for local disadvantaged kids, through Maysles Films, through which he and partners direct television commercials and industrials. Which makes puts the following quote, from late in last night’s Q & A session, in a quizzical context:

“We’ve lost our humanity in the mass media, and I aim to restore that the best I can,” Maysles declared. “The TV commercial, to my mind, is the worst example of that.”

You might expect a filmmaker who has funded some of the greatest documentaries in the history of the form through commercial moonlighting to have a philosophical view of the balance between art and commerce, or at least not be quite as quick to blame the downfall of civilization on the source of so many paychecks. It would be fascinating to really get Maysles to delve into his conflict over his “real” work vs. the work that sustains his. Being that he’s relied on television commercials and corporate films to fund his creative pursuits dating back to the beginning of his career, are his unkind words about adverts purely the product of resentment? And how does he manage that conflict and resentment just to get through the day?

Alas, these questions are a bit too complex to be posed to a special guest during a post-screening Q & A. If I’ve learned anything recently, it’s that when everyone else is having a good time, I should keep my questions (all of which seem perfectly reasonable in my brain but apparently turn nuclear once they hit other ears) to myself.