Roots of the NY Underground

The New York underground took root a long way from Hollywood. As the groundbreaking filmmaker Maya Deren famously claimed, “I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick.” She and her peers cultivated a scrappy, do-it-yourself cinema of fearless personal expression, laying the groundwork for the founding of Millennium Film Workshop and the Film-Makers’ Cooperative in the 1960s. This program focuses on formative works by the organizations’ founding members and their mentors. Much like the cinema that grew from them, these films whirl with abstract colors and shapes; explore the alienness of the human body; and embrace the queer, the political, and the explicitly sexual. Many spring from the soil of New York City, capturing the city’s streets and scenes. They also draw attention to the medium of film itself, delighting in the textures and structures of celluloid. In a way, this program is Long Live the Underground! in miniature. The Very Eye of Night. 1959. USA. Directed by Maya Deren. 16mm. 15 min. Bridges-Go-Round. 1959. USA. Directed by Shirley Clarke. 16mm. 4 min. Eye Music in Red Major. 1961. USA. Directed by Marie Menken. 16mm. Silent. 5 min. Ai (Love). 1962. Japan. Directed by Takahiko Iimura. 16mm. 10 min. Award Presentation to Andy Warhol. 1964. USA. Directed by Jonas Mekas. 16mm. 12 min. Little Stabs at Happiness. 1963. USA. Directed by Ken Jacobs. 16mm. 15 min. Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc.. 1966. USA. Directed by Owen Land. 16mm. 5 min. Tear/Or. 1967. USA. Directed by Saul Levine. 16mm. Silent. 4 min. Beatles Electroniques. 1969. USA. Directed by Jud Yalkut, Nam June Paik. 16mm. 3 min. Surface Tension. 1968. USA. Directed by Hollis Frampton. 16mm. 10 min. Program approx. 83 min.