Last week I said I’d be skipping the Monday Memo until next week due to the fact that I’d be at True/False Fest all weekend, but despite being thoroughly drained from the incredible films I took in and festivities I took part in, there is yet news that must be addressed, albeit briefly. As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Albert Maysles, a documentary pioneer whose work includes such classics as GREY GARDENS, SALESMAN and GIMME SHELTER, passed away late last Thursday night, just after it was announced that IN TRANSIT, what will now be his final film, will have its world premiere next month at the Tribeca Film Festival. Word spread like wild fire both on Twitter and through the various Qs throughout True/False Friday morning. During the festival’s celebratory March March through downtown Columbia, MO, filmmakers took to the streets with portraits of Maysles and film stills from his monumental oeuvre pinned to their jackets in tribute to their fallen hero.

Mourning the loss, articles revealing the news of his death and detailing the filmmaker’s life and career showed up at The New Yorker in a loving piece by Richard Brody, in an article by Matt Schudel in the Washington Post, the New York Times thanks to Anita Gates, as well as at The Dissolve in an obituary by Keith Phipps. For Slate, Charles Loxton wrote a piece on the filmmaker’s passing, while Matt Zoller Seitz wrote up a list of 8 things about Al over at RogerEbert.com. For this week’s Indiewire Podcast, Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson discuss why Maysles mattered. Christopher Campbell also paid tribute and passed along the statement released from the Maysles Documentary Center over at Nonfics.

Maysles died just prior to the theatrical rerelease of GREY GARDENS, which Alex Simon of The Huffington Post had recently interviewed him about. Andrew O’Hehir had also reported on the film’s restoration for Salon, while Katey Rich of Vanity Fair released a 2001 Phone Call Between Little Edie of GREY GARDENS and Maysles earlier in the week. Just prior to boarding a plane to True/False and hearing the news of Maysles passing, Farihah Zaman had submit an article on GREY GARDENS to The Talk House.

Over the years, Al Maysles was a guest of and mentor to Stranger Than Fiction and it is with great sadness that we must say our goodbyes. Our conversations with Al about SALESMAN and GREY GARDENS can be viewed at the links.

This week is rare in that we hosting a double header with SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION playing tonight at 8 pm, while A DANGEROUS GAME will screen Thursday at 8 pm, both at the IFC Center with post-screening Q&As, as usual.

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Tenacious in its attention grabbing fervor, the elation of Oscar night has been lingering in the air for much of the past week. Reflecting on CITIZENFOUR’s big win, Mark Olsen of the LA Times called attention to Neil Patrick Harris’s slight, yet pointed joke of ‘treason’ following Laura Poitras’s acceptance speech, while Tom Roston dissected the acceptance speech itself over at the POV Blog.  At Indiewire, Nigel M. Smith listed 8 things he learned from the Oscar red-carpet, and Anne Thompson wrote up and extensive diagnosis of the evening’s events. Following the Oscar win, the CITIZENFOUR team – Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden – took part in a rather tense Reddit hosted Ask Me Anything session, which ended up garnering the attention of journalist like Will Oremus of Slate, Colin Gorenstein of Salon, and Thomas Halleck of International Business times, all of whom wrote pieces on the participatory event. In contrast, The Nation’s Ali Gharib simply wrote an elegant piece on the necessity of CITIZENFOUR’s Oscar win.

Tomorrow, another Oscar nominated film comes back into focus with Liz Garbus and Jonathan Stack’s THE FARM: ANGOLA, USA screening at the IFC Center as part of our ongoing Winter ’15 season of Stranger Than Fiction. In addition to garnering the attention of the Academy back in 1998, THE FARM also won 3 Primetime Emmy Awards, Best Documentary Film of 1998 from the National Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle and the LA Critics Association, as well as the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Following tomorrow’s screening, directors Liz Garbus and Jonathan Stack will be on hand for a Q&A.

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