A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

(1943), most obviouslybut it remains powerful and fascinating. At first, a fly is seen, in extreme close-up, as it "explores" the body of a nude woman (she's identified as "Virginia Lust" in the credits); later more and more flies are seen crawling on the body, which now looks more like a corpse; and at the end, the camera pans up and "flies" out the window of the room. The remarkable sound track is a combination of excerpts from Ono's vocal piece,

Fly,

and music composed by Lennon.

Up Your Legs Forever (1970)

is basically a remake of

No. 4 (Bottoms),

using legs, rather than buttocks: the camera continually pans up

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A fly explores a woman's body in Ono's

Fly

 (1970). By permission of Ono.

from the feet to the upper thighs of hundreds of men and women, as we listen to the sound of the panning apparatus and a variety of conversations about the project. Though

Up Your Legs Forever

has some interesting moments, it doesn't have the drama or the humor of

No. 4 (Bottoms)

.

Ono and Lennon also collaborated on two Lennon films (whether a film is a "Lennon film" or an "Ono film" depends on whose basic concept instigated the project).

Apotheosis

(1970) is one of the most ingenious single-shot films ever made. A camera pans up the cloaked bodies of Lennon and Ono, then on up into the sky above a village, higher and higher across snow-covered fields (the camera was mounted in a hot-air balloon, which we never seethough we hear the device that heats the air) and then up into the clouds; the screen remains completely white for several minutes, and finally, once many members of the audience have given up on the film, the camera rises out into the sunny skyscape above the clouds. The film is a test and reward of viewer patience and serenity. For

Erection,

a camera was mounted so that we can watch the construction of a building, in time-lapse dissolves from one image to another, several hours or days later. The film is not so much about the action of constructing a building (as a pixilated film

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of such a subject might be), as it is about the subtle, sometimes magical changes that take place between the dissolves.

Erection

is more mystery than documentation.

Imagine

(1971)not to be confused with the recent

Imagine: John Lennon

(1988, directed by Andrew Soltwas the final Ono/Lennon cinematic collaboration: it's a series of sketches accompanied by their music. Since 1971 Ono has made no films, though she did make a seven-minute video documenting the response to a conceptual event at the Museum of Modern Art:

Museum of Modern Art Show

(1971). She has also made several music videos that document her process of recovering from Lennon's death

Walking on Thin Ice

(1981),

Woman

(1981),

Goodbye Sadness

(1982)as well as records and art objects.

Of course, she remains one of the world's most visible public figures and the most widely known conceptual artist.

I spoke with Ono at her office at the Dakota in May 1989.

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MacDonald:

Were you a moviegoer as a child?

Ono:

I was a movie buff, yes. In prep school in Tokyo you were supposed to go directly home after school. But most of us kids often went to the movies. We used to hide our school badges and sneak into the theater.

MacDonald:

Do you remember what you saw?

Ono:

Yes, I mostly saw French films. There was a group of kids who liked American filmsJimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn, Doris Day and Rock Hudson, Bob Hope and Bing Crosbyand there was another crowd of girls who thought they were intellectuals, and went to French films. I was in the French film group. We would go to see

The Children of Paradise

[1945], that sort of thing. It was a very exciting time. I loved those films.

MacDonald:

Did you see some of the early French surrealist films from the twenties?

Ono:

Those things I saw much later. We're talking about when I was in high school in the late forties. I saw the surrealist films in the sixties in New York and Paris.

The films I saw in high school that were closest to surrealism were the Cocteau films,

Beauty and the Beast

and

Orpheus

[1950]. Those films really gave me some ideas.

MacDonald:

The earliest I know of you in connection with film is the sound track you did for Taka Iimura's

Love

in 1963 by hanging the micro-

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phone out the window. I know the later

Fluxfilm

reels that were made in 1966, but did the Fluxus group get involved with film before that?

Ono: