Market Street. 2005. USA. Directed by Tomonari Nishikawa. 16mm courtesy Lightcone. Silent. 5 min.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One. 1968. USA. Directed by William Greaves. 35mm courtesy Janus Films. 75 min.
In the heady spring of 1968, William Greaves and a film crew gathered in Central Park to shoot a marital dispute scene for a prospective feature. In this unclassifiable film-about-filmmaking, Greaves quickly turns the process inside out, leaving it to his beleaguered crew members and occasional passersby to weigh in on the course of the production as the actors’ screen test continues to roll, and a second and third crew film the filming. Greaves wrote in his original proposal for Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: “There is a tremendous unstated need on the part of audiences for a new cinema language; one in which a more total statement of reality can be made…. A language whose intimacy catapults the viewer into a state of consciousness that broadens his perception and perspectives of the social issues which are fiercely rocking the boat of what could become a Great Society.” This landmark of experimental vérité screened at the 1991 Flaherty seminar organized by Stephen Gallagher and Coco Fusco.
The film is preceded by Market Street, a structuralist city symphony by Tomonari Nishikawa (1969–2025) that was included in the 2011 seminar programmed by Dan Streible—and is presented here in memoriam.