I was surprised: it seemed to come out of nowhere.
I have no real explanation for that. I figure, the professional life, even if it's a filmmaker's, is not photogenic. There are certain crafts, professions, that are photogenicto mesuch as, for instance, bread making, farming, fishing, street works, cutting wood, coal mining, et cetera. Technological crafts and professions are not photogenic. Another reason is that until 1960 or so, no filmmaker was really filming his or her own life. Whatever one was filming was always outside of one's lifein my case, the Lithuanian community or New York streets. The diaristic, autobiographical preoccupations did not really exist. The personal lives of the whole first wave of American experimental filmmakers
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are not recorded on film. There is a little bit of Dwinell Grant, fooling in front of the camera. Francis Lee has footage of himself and some of his friends. But the personal had not yet become a concern. As a result, in
you do not see much of my own life until later. One didn't go to parties with the camera. If I had taken my Bolex to any of Maya Deren's parties and started filming, they would have laughed. Serious filmmaking was still scripted filmmaking.
Who were the first people you ran into who were using film in more personal ways?
My first contacts with the New York film-viewing community began very early. The second or third evening after I arrived here, I went to a screening of
[1920] and Epstein's
[1928], sponsored by the New York Film Society, run at that time by Rudolf Arnheim. Then we went to Cinema 16, but we did not meet any filmmakers there: we were just two shabby DPs watching films. When I heard that Hans Richter was in New York, running the film department at City College, I wrote him a letter saying that I had no money, but would like to attend some classes. He wrote back, "Sure, come!" So I did and I met Hans Richter. I did not take any of his classesactually, he did not teach any classes that winterbut I met many people: Shirley Clarke, Gideon Bachmann, Frank Kuenstler (the poet), and others. I continued seeing Gideon, and we decidedit was his ideato start our own film group. It was called The Film Group. Beginning in 1951 we had screenings once a month, sometimes more often. We rented films, mostly experimental, avant-garde films. I wrote many of the program notes. Through those screenings we met other people interested in filmmaking. Another person very active during those years (between 1950 and 1955) was Perry Miller, who has lately made several important documentaries
[1970]. She was running an international festival of films on art, a very big event, at Hunter College. She held at least three of these events, in 1952, 1953, and, I think, 1954. I saw Alain Resnais's early films there, and some films by local filmmakers. I remember a pattern film by John Arvonio, who filmed reflections in the rain in Times Square. Nobody knows that film anymore. I don't know if it still exists. Also, no one seems to hear any longer of Wheaton Galentine or Joe Slavin, or Peter Hollander, who distributed early films by Jordan Belson and others through a distribution center called Kinesis.
We undertook two or three documentary film projects with Gideon Bachmann. One was about modern architecture in a community not far outside of New York called Usonia. I shot two or three rolls on the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings there. I think Gideon has that footage; I don't. In 1953 I ran a short film series at the Gallery East, on First Street and
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Avenue B, a gallery run by Joel Baxter and Louis Brigante. In 1954 my brother and I started our own film society called Film Forum. George Capsis was the third member. We had screenings for two years. At one of our first showsa Jordan Belson show, with Belson presentwe clashed with the projectionists' union. They came and cut off the electricity. When we wanted to continue, they threatened to beat us up, so we had to stop the screening.
The color in the first two reels of
is gorgeous.
Much of it is time's effect on the early Kodachrome. I didn't like it in the original color. As it began aging, I liked it much more and decided to use it. I remember having a similar experience with Gregory Markopoulos's trilogy,
[all 1948]. It seemed to me to become more and more wonderful as time went on. When some people looked at it later, they said, "It's horrible, what's happened to the color." But I found the later color superior to the original.
That process will continue.