At Maxwell Street

"Maxwell Street since the late 1800s has been the city's best site for free enterprise, flea market, black market, blues bands on the corner, watch bands up to the elbow, fresh fruit and greasy sausage, hawking and gawking. There is a steady parade of picture-takers passing stands, booths, stalls, and heaps of merchandise. They wear Nikons as jewelry. They seek icons of poverty.; "At Maxwell Street demonstrates a remarkable mode of filmmaking. To let a handful of beginning students aim camera and microphones might invite a primer of errors. But Palazzolo instead achieves, with grace, an honest essay. A quality of awkwardness and improvisation comes about which fits the action indigenous to the street. Though his pedagogy may appear scattershot, Palazzolo's film is stamped with his characteristic humanism, relish of oddballs, and instinct for mysterious detail. His editing harmonizes a phenomenological grab-bag of disparate footage without homogenizing its true roughness. The music Paul Gartski created for the film is entrancing, and is an essential ingredient. The discipline Palazzolo exercises over his many sources is subtle and winning." - Bill Stamets; (Canyon Cinema)