Wholly Communion
Peter Whitehead - 1963 - UK - English - 33' - 16mm ()
With Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Harry Fainlight, Alexander Trocchi,
Allen Ginsberg’s arrival in London in June 1965 prompts the documentary filmmaker to prepare a movie based on the performance readings by the poets of the Beat generation in the Royal Albert Hall. Interventions from different authors like Ginsberg, Gregory Corso or Lawrence Ferlinghetti are re-visited in the film’s editing made from a selection of different sequences. While remaining in the background, the filmmaker listen to each author, deliberately avoiding a dominant narrative presence.
Towers Open Fire
William Burroughs, Anthony Balch - 1963 - UK - English - 10' - 16mm ()
With Antony Balch, William Burroughs, Alexander Trocchi,
Coming from a text written by Burroughs in Gibraltar, this movie evokes the possibility of creating an utopian territory. While heading a commando, Burroughs parodies an act of resistance within an apartment. Completely isolated, the guerilla simulates the chaotic situation that would follow a Stock Exchange crash. The rejection of traditional patriarchal structures is also strongly expressed in the scene showing the destruction of family pictures. Between control and rebellion, the author’s compulsive monologue enters into a counter rhythm with the visual set ups and disruptions. Repetitive projections of the Dream Machine as well as the calligraphic grids from Gysin also make an appearance in the movie.
The Cut-Ups
William Burroughs, Anthony Balch - 1966 - UK - English - 18' - 16mm ()
With William Burroughs, Brion Gysin,
Developed by Brion Gysin, the notion of cut-ups is described in his own words: “ while cutting a piece of cardboard meant to display a drawing in my hotel room, I sliced a pile of papers with my cutter and I remembered what I had said to Burroughs six months before about applying painting techniques directly to writing. I picked up the bare words and I started to bring together some texts (…).” [1] Close to abstract motives, his painted scriptures allow us to see the destiny of a guerilla that refuses to consider language as a transparent form of communication. The voices of Burroughs and Gysin alternate the most automatic formulas of conversation: “hello”, “yes”, “good”, “thank you” until they manage to lose all significance. . The injunction to look at the picture and the anxiety with regards to its persistence come from a test performed by scientologists. The movie was shown for two consecutive weeks at the Cinephone in London in 1967.
[1] Brion Gysin, Œuvre croisée (The Third Mind) Préface et traduction de Gérard-Georges Lemaire et Anne Christine Taylor, Paris : Ed. Flammarion, coll. « Connections », 1976, p.55.
The Last Clean Shirt
Alfred Leslie - 1964 - USA - English - 39' - 16mm ()
With
A painter, Alfred Leslie, close to artists from the expressionist movement like William de Kooning, produces this movie following his collaboration with Robert Frank in the making of Pull my Daisy. The movie was shown at the New York Films Festival in 1964. The continuous prose of the poet Frank O’Hara accompanies a sequence repeated three times from different points of view.
