Program 1: Film-Makers’ Showcase

Film-Makers’ Showcase
Francis Lee, 1963, 16mm, 3m

Jerry
David Brooks, 1963, 16mm, 3m

Divinations
Storm de Hirsch, 1964, 16mm, 6m

Notebook
Marie Menken, 1964, 16mm, 10m

Fleming Faloon
Owen Land, 1964, 16mm, 5m

Breath Death
Stan VanDerBeek, 1964, 35mm, 10m

Scorpio Rising
Kenneth Anger, 1963, 16mm, 29m

In January of 1962 the Film-Makers’ Cooperative was established as the distribution wing of the New American Cinema Group, with Jonas Mekas leading the charge. The Coop provided an influential model, replicated across the globe soon thereafter, for artists to come together and collectively oversee the circulation of their work. The variety of avant-garde film forms that the organization helped support is on view in this program, ranging from the cinematic sketches of Marie Menken’s Notebook and the hand-painted celluloid of Storm de Hirsch’s Divinations to the delirious collage of Stan VanDerBeek’s Breath Death and the masterful montage of Kenneth Anger’s homoerotic biker odyssey Scorpio Rising. “We don’t want false, polished, slick films—we prefer them rough, unpolished, but alive,” declared the New American Cinema Group in its first published statement later that year. “We don’t want rosy films—we want them the color of blood.”