On May 31, 2014, at 4:12 AM, [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
Was it filmed in a lawyer's office? Willard van Dyke badly lets the side down by suggesting that 'there is the possibility that new techniques are being explored and that "other" filmmakers can benefit by these techniques'. The the whole film is redeemed by the glimpse of Brakhage's pipe! Nicky. I read it a little differently: I think Van Dyke is speaking as the most credentialed person in the edisode and (being a MoMA curator) was totally familiar with the need to present a plausible PR face for fundraising and so forth. He gave the correct alibi for the mainstream (which is what the broadcast was going out to: the prestige nightly national news show). I think it’s remarkable that it got this much airtime, and that they showed the Brakhage film. I’ve heard broadcast engineers argue that they “couldn’t show” experimental films on TV at the time (and decades after) because it broke the technical capacity/FCC rules of the time (read as conventions) not because of content but because of form (e.g. single frame edits, etc.). I think the whole tone of earnest explanation by the figures here (except the typical Warhol bit—well known in the media by that time) is particularly interesting. Given the opportunity to explain, they do. They are humble and straight forward. Quite the contrast to the frequent lair assumption that they were in-your-face rebels trying to shock the establishment. Chuck Kleinhans
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