A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

a prize, but they had decided to show it in the festival as the last film on the last nighta position traditionally reserved for exciting new movies. Everyone was curious about the fact that the exciting new film being shown last, made by someone who had won first prize before, had not won a prize and was not included on the Ann Arbor tour. There was a huge crowd. When the film came on the event turned into a riot. The theater had a projection booth above the audience that you got to by ladder. Someone in the audience was so outraged by the film that he had climbed up and tackled the projectionist, Peter Wilde. They wrestled on the floor, the guy determined to pull the film out of the projector. People were booing and yelling and leaving. A woman stood at the door and, as people tried to walk out, she would swing her long shoulder bag by the handle and hit them over the head. When I met her the next year, she said, ''You know, I would kill for that film." I thought, "My god, how could this have created so much furor?" I loved hearing about it, but I'm also glad I missed that screening.

MacDonald:

Did you show the film outside the standard avant-garde screening spaces?

Severson:

Sometimes. One summer I showed

Chakra

in my hometown, Eugene, Oregon. I had wrongly assumed that this would be a straitlaced, middle-class crowd. What I had not anticipated was that Eugene (at that time) was the lesbian separatist capital of the world! I went through an elaborate presentation, trying to make people comfortable, making all the wrong assumptions about whom I was speaking to. After the program, I was answering questions, and someone asked about my intentions and whether I thought the film was erotic. I answered, "To my knowledge, no one has ever gotten a hard-on watching it." A woman in striped overalls stood up and said, "I did!" I loved thatbut it was a tough screening; I completely miscalculated my audience.

I was also invited to show

Chakra,

along with my other films, to medical students at the University of Southern California Medical School. I'd had some warning that the young doctors might be abusive, so I went with a friend who had a three-month-old baby, and I insisted on holding the baby all through the screening and during the question-and-answer period after. I recommend that if you expect to find yourself in a similar situation.

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Looking back, the only regret I have about

Chakra

is that the titles are so sloppy. I was teaching at the Art Institute when I made most of my movies. It was a macho kind of place. In general, it wasn't considered appropriate to be too concerned about the niceties of your production or your performance. Things being a little rough around the edges was not only acceptable, it was admired. Now I look back at those films and I like the ones where I did a really clean job on the titles. I should redo the titles on

Chakra

and make them clean and very cool, almost clinical.

MacDonald:

Have you continued to make films? Nothing is listed in the Canyon Catalogue after 1974.

Severson:

No. I made one or two more films in England;

Animals Running

[1974] and

The Struggle of the Meat

[1974] are still distributed. I stayed in England instead of returning to the Art Institute because I was driven (that's definitely the word!) to seek teachers to help me develop some psychic capacities that had been surfacing. It was clear to me that something was happening to me, and I had to find out what to do with it, how to direct it more effectively.

In England I started working on a videotape series on unorthodox healing methods. I believed this would provide me with a kind of cover while I observed different teachers and their work. The third healer I interviewed was Dr. Thomas Maughan, a homeopathic doctor and Chief of the Ancient Order of Druids. He effortlessly lured me into the Order with some very tasty information about dreams and dreamwork.

Now I'm working a lot with dreams again. Personal movies. I have a call-in radio show on dreams in Honolulu, and I write a dream column. I'm still interested in basically the same thingfinding a convenient vehicle that makes it easy and exciting for people to explore and expand their own awareness. I think that has been my own lifetime script. Originally I thought my movies, and particularly

Chakra,

had that value. Now I guess you could say I'm working with other people to improve the scripts of their own inner dramas. You should hear some of the wild and hairy dreams that are called in to the radio show. By comparison

Chakra

is pretty tame!

Laura Mulvey

MacDonald:

What was the nature of the collaboration between you and Peter Wollen as you were developing

Riddles of the Sphinx