Oscar Winner Haskell Wexler Documents Occupy LA

Yesterday, we told you about the Occupy LA broadcast news coverage efforts of Margot Paez, a 27-year-old journalist posting daily video updates under the moniker of Insight Out News. Today, thanks to a piece in the LA Times by freelance writer Steve Appleford, it’s time to highlight the very opposite end of the protest media equation.

Not only is Haskell Wexler a whole lot older (89); he’s also, thanks to cinematography for 1967′s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and 1976′s Bound for Glory, a two-time Academy Award winner. In addition to posting short online interview vignettes, Wexler’s fall sojourn will be part of a much larger feature-length project:

Documentary filmmakers Alan Barker and Joan Churchill (pictured) have accompanied Wexler on a couple of his trips to Occupy LA, as part of their three-year project about the cinematographer, and have watched his particular interviewing style. Barker says that Wexler’s “activism has been continuous his whole life” but that he often challenges protesters to explain their positions.

For his downtown LA filming work, Wexler told Appleford he favors a small HD camera. Says the veteran of many a political protest: “”You want something that doesn’t look professional… that is unthreatening.”

[Photo credit: Rita Taggart/LA Times]

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