Helen Levitt: I was born in Brooklyn, in Bensonhurst, and lived there with my family. My father
came from Lithuania when he was about 16, my mother's father came from Poltava
which is near Kiev. My mother was born here. My grandmother lived across the street,
and my uncle lived in her house. We had a big house, backyard and flowers — it was like
living in a small town.
Sybil Miller: In Ben Maddow's film Storm of Strangers, there were a couple of lines I thought
were relevant to your work. At one point he says, "Forget geography, don't study maps,
study faces." And another: "Every child is born beautiful and smart, so let them grow up
beautiful and smart, don't stand in their way." Actually that line could be from your film
The Quiet One, a moving film, beautifully done.
HL: Well, the commentary's very good.
SM: In that film, you had a lot of different roles, you were writer, photographer and
editor as well.
HL: I was not THE writer or THE photographer, we all did a little bit of everything,
except Richard Bagley, who did most of the photography, not me. I did a little bit, but he
did the greater part.
SM: What inspired you to make The Quiet One?
HL: My friend Janice Loeb, who later married my brother, she had been painting and
was stuck, and didn't want to go on painting, and I said, let's make a movie. And she
came from parents who had some money, they were not really wealthy, but they were
better off than most people, and she always tried to support different things that they
believed in. And in