Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording of the same name, the five-minute short features a shadowy montage of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway in New York City.

Drew, Leacock and Pennebaker, as well as photographers Albert Maysles, Terrence McCartney Filgate and Bill Knoll, all filmed the campaigning from dawn to midnight over the course of five days.

Widely considered to be the first candid and comprehensive look at the day-by-day events of a Presidential race, it was the first film in which the sync sound camera could move freely with characters throughout a breaking story, a major technical achievement that laid the groundwork for modern-day documentary filmmaking.

The same year Dont Look Back was released in theaters, Pennebaker worked with author Norman Mailer (who would later appear in 1979's Town Bloody Hall[17]) on the first of many film collaborations.

Pennebaker produced a number of films from the event, capturing breakthrough performances from the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Otis Redding and Janis Joplin that remain seminal documents in rock history.

In 1970, Pennebaker filmed the cast recording session for Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's musical, Company, shortly after the show opened on Broadway.

The film was initially intended to be a television pilot chronicling recording processes of Broadway musicals, but despite wide acclaim the series was scrapped after the original producers left New York to head production at MGM.

In 1968, the two worked on a film that Godard initially conceived as "One AM" (One American Movie) on the subject of anticipated mass struggles in the United States – similar to the uprisings in France that year.

[22][23] In 1988, Pennebaker, Hegedus and David Dawkins followed Depeche Mode as they toured the U.S. in support of Music for the Masses, the band's commercial breakthrough in America.

The resulting film, 101, was released the following year, and prominently features a group of young fans travelling across America as winners of a "be-in-a-Depeche-Mode-movie-contest," which culminates at Depeche Mode's landmark concert at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

[24] Because of this, the film is widely considered to be the impetus for the "reality" craze that swept MTV in the following years, including The Real World and Road Rules.

[29][30] In 1992, during the start of the Democratic primaries, Pennebaker and Hegedus approached campaign officials for Arkansas governor Bill Clinton about filming his presidential run.

They were granted limited access to the candidate but allowed to focus on lead strategist James Carville and communications director George Stephanopoulos.

In 2014 it was reported that Pennebaker, in collaboration with his wife, was working on a documentary focused on the Nonhuman Rights Project and its efforts to have certain animals, such as cetaceans, elephants, and apes, be classified as legal persons.

An accomplished engineer, Pennebaker developed one of the first fully portable, synchronized 16mm camera and sound recording systems which revolutionized modern filmmaking.