Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film Page #3

a film about rebellion of revolvers.

Now you can't make a film

about rebellion of revolvers

because a revolver that

rebels doesn't shoot,

so not shooting is not an action,

you know, it's just

a piece of iron.

So I discarded this.

But I said all right we

make a rebellion of objects.

We all wore bowler hats.

At the time we didn't want

to be recognized as artists

so we all had bourgeois bowler hats

like the businessmen in

Wall Street or in London.

So we put black strings

through the bowler hats,

a piece of cardboard

inside, a long stick

and swung these bowler

hats in front of the camera.

And it looked awfully nice.

It looked like a swarm of pigeons!

Suddenly a kind of rhythm developed

which became a kind

of political satire.

I thought I could see in his face

when he told us about his early days

that he was reliving

the period before

the collapse of Germany

with the third Reich.

He had told us for example

that the Nazis saw right away

that surrealism and experimental

films had to be banned

because if objects

could get out of control,

human beings could

get out of control.

And he lost a lot of films because

he got beaten up the Nazis, the SS.

If you look at the film

Ghosts Before Breakfast

you'll see scenes of thugs

punching into the camera.

That's actually an experience he

had and he carried on his person,

when he escaped, films that

he thought were of value.

Richter was political, he was

a writer, he was a filmmaker,

and we have here in the coop collection

Ghosts Before Breakfast with the reel

that has the swastika on it.

So this is actually the reel,

you can see the iron cross.

Hans Richter was not alone.

During the 1930s and 40s, many

European artists and filmmakers

came to America where they met

American artists and filmmakers.

For example, Maya Deren

met Alexander Hammid,

an accomplished Czech filmmaker

forced to leave Prague.

The two married, and he

taught her filmmaking.

Together, the young newlyweds made

Meshes of the Afternoon in 1943,

now considered one of the most important

films of the early American avant-garde.

I'm interested in the fact that

the war engendered the radical art.

Yeah, the American art wasn't taken

seriously by anyone until then.

And it's those

Europeans who came over,

who taught 'em a few kinks,

they all tried to measure up

to the exciting European art

that they'd become acquainted

with, and kind of overdid it.

And their overdoing it

made it more attention

grabbing than the European art

who were getting complacent in

accepting their importance, you know.

Tell where you have been,

tell what you have seen.

The Mekas brothers, Jonas and

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