![\"Photographer](\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-deadline-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n\tOscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard has been to the Cannes Film Festival numerous times going back almost 40 years: with Willow in 1988, The Da Vinci Code in 2006, and Jim Henson Idea Man two years ago, among other appearances.<\/p>\n
\n\tHe returned to the Croisette this year with Avedon, his documentary about the extraordinary photographer Richard Avedon.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAlways a fascinating experience, always kind of intense,\u201d Howard said of Cannes as he stopped by the Deadline Studio just after his world premiere. \u201cBut the spirit around the docs is quite different than when you bring a large studio movie here with all the anticipation that it brings with it. Whereas the spirit around the doc community, the screenings, just the entire vibe, it\u2019s really pure cinema. It\u2019s discovery, it\u2019s exploration, it\u2019s conversation, and it\u2019s fun. It\u2019s a little more relaxed feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cRelaxed\u201d is not a word one would use about Avedon, who remained in constant motion during his six-decade career, driven to explore human faces and beauty in portraiture, fashion spreads and more.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tPhotographer Richard Avedon with some of the photos from his \u2018In the West\u2019 project.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSusan Middleton<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cHe was busy. He stayed very, very busy,\u201d Howard noted. \u201cWith Avedon, what we had was this breadth of time when he worked both commercially and also his more journalistic work. The archives were amazing and for the first time the [Richard Avedon] foundation and the family were willing to give a documentary group access, really full access to these archives.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe famed, the beautiful, the compelling \u2013 all came within his focal plane: Marilyn Monroe, Twiggy, Diana Ross, the Beatles, American cowboys, U.S. military brass, politicians, three generations of Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s family, his friend James Baldwin, a young Lew Alcindor, later to become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tLew Alcindor photographed in New York May 2, 1963.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRichard Avedon Foundation<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThat picture of this young man at age 18, 17, says everything about the man I know who\u2019s not only a basketball legend, but a civic leader, cultural leader, an author, a journalist \u2014 that intelligence, it\u2019s all there in that photo when you look at it,\u201d Howard marveled. \u201cI don\u2019t know how Avedon would capture these things in a single frame, but a lot of it would be the way he would interface with people, I would say \u2018direct\u2019 them. And sometimes yes, it was, \u2018Tilt your head down,\u2019 or \u2018How about try moving or jumping?\u2019 but sometimes it was just getting to know them and getting them to trust him enough to, I don\u2019t know, to share something. It was remarkable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 2020, author Philip Gefter published What Becomes a Legend Most: Richard Avedon, a biography that also explored Avedon\u2019s career and life, including his conflicted feelings about his sexuality. Howard\u2019s film, based largely on archive interviews with Avedon, doesn\u2019t delve into how Avedon viewed his sexuality because it wasn\u2019t something the photographer ever publicly addressed.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe chose to focus on that creative journey, which we could really define,\u201d Howard explained. \u201cAvedon himself never spoke openly about it. He had, certainly, relationships with women that are on the record, and we chose to stay focused on the things that we could really [document].\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWatch the full conversation in the video above.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Deadline Studio at Cannes is sponsored by SCAD.<\/p>\n
\n\tTitle: Avedon<\/p>\n
\n\tSection: Special Screenings<\/p>\n
\n\tDirector: Ron Howard<\/p>\n
\n\tSales agent: Cinetic Media<\/p>\n
\n\tLogline: Richard Avedon\u2019s photographs shaped our image-driven world. This film explores his life and legacy through never-before-seen archives, footage, and interviews, revealing how his vision transformed 20th-century visual culture. <\/p>\n
\n\tPanelist: Ron Howard (director)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard has been to the Cannes Film Festival numerous times going back almost 40 years:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,330187,54192,45527,330188,134,344,151335,66336],"class_list":["post-685086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-avedon","tag-cannes","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-cannes-studio","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-richard-avedon","tag-ron-howard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}