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Anne Belle, award-winning documentary filmmaker, died June 18 while in Los Angeles. The cause of death was a heart attack. She was 68 and lived in New York City and Remsenberg, New York. Belle's most recent film, Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse, profiled the last great muse and quintessential interpreter of the late choreographer George Balanchine. It was nominated for an Academy Award after premiering at the New York Film Festival in 1996. It was also shown as a special on PBS Television's Great Performances/ Dance In America. The New York Times wrote that it was "an exquisitely made film.. .. An endlessly absorbing chronicle of life, art, and passion intertwined." It was the third in a trilogy of dance films by Belle. The first was Reflections of a Dancer: Alexandra, Danilova, a portrait of the great Russian-American prima ballerina assoluta of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo; then Dancing for Mr. B: Six Balanchine Ballerinas, a multiple portrait of six famous American ballerinas-Maria Tallchief, Melissa Hayden, Allegra Kent, Merrill Ashley, Mary Ellen Moylan, and Darci Kistler-who danced for Balanchine from the 1930's to the 1980's. The film is also a multifaceted portrait of Balanchine as seen through the eyes of his ballerinas. Dancingfor Mr. B also premiered at the New York Film Festival and was showcased on PBS's Great Performances/Dance In America. The New York Times called it "a lovely, shrewd elegy, as graceful, taut, and fiercely controlled as the dancers who are its subjects." Other award-winning films by Belle include Baymen-Our Waters are Dying, a documentary about the men who harvest shellfish from the bays of Eastern Long Island, and Henry, a portrait of a fiercely independent old man living on a one-time sugar barge on the Hudson River. Baymen was shown nationally on PBS, and Henry premiered at the Museum of Modern Art and was shown on WNET/Thirteen. Belle's films have been shown and won awards at many festivals worldwide, including Sundance, the Berlin Film Festival, Montreal Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Leningrad Film Festival, Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals, American Film Festival, Dance Films Festival, and on international television.





