This program is inspired by the book "Film as a Subversive Art" written in 1974 by Amos Vogel, the founder of the Cinema 16 in New York, New York Film Festival and Lincoln Center Film Department. Reviewing over 500 films (many of which are banned and rarely seen), Amos Vogel ruminates upon "how the aesthetic, sexual and ideological subversives use film medium to manipulate our conscious and unconscious, demystify visual taboos, destroy dated cinematic forms, undermine existing value systems and institutions." Among the featured filmmakers are: Warren Haack (US), Roland Lethem (Belgium), Kurt Kren and Otto Muehl (Austria), Y. Matsukawa (Japan) and Erik Barnouw (US), Bruce Conner (US) and Stan Brakhage (US).

SELECTIVE SERVICE SYSTEM 13min, 16mm, 1970 - p. 304, Trance and Witchcraft
Director: Warren Haack (USA)

"One of the most shocking documentary films ever made.  A young anti-war American, to avoid the draft, calmly aims a rifle at his foot and shoots. For several endless minutes, he thrashes about the floor in unbearable pain, in his own blood.  The filming continues.  "There was no attempt to alter the proceedings that took place." - Amos Vogel

THE BLOODTHIRSTY FAIRY 24min, 16mm, 1968 - p. 199, 238 The Power of Visual Taboo, The End of Sexual Taboos: Homosexuality and other Variants
Director: Roland Lethem (Belgium)

"The subversive always attempts to go a step further even than his most ardent followers.  Those who accept visual portrayals of the penis, may well balk at this particular combination -- a sample of the private collection of an anarchist fairy who specializes in castration of leaders of all types. Questions of "limits", "good taste", and even "political advisability" will suddenly arise -- merely indicating that yet another taboo is being uncovered.

"A voluptuous nude fairy attacks law, order, and religion by choking a nun with her cross (first arousing her by fondling her breasts), beating a uniformed official, gouging out a boy's eyes
for threatening her with a toy gun (she licks off her bloody fingers afterwards), and, finally, methodically castrating a student because he studies law.   A pan along a shelf reveals the meticulously bottled penises of Diem, Martin Luther King, Kennedy, Johnson, and De Gaulle.  At the end, two angels deliver her in a barrel to a new destination:  the Belgian Royal Palace.  The swastika that opened the film changes into Nixon." - Amos Vogel

[to get more information about Roland Lethem, visit http://www.cinergie.be/annuaire/realisateurs/roland_lethem.htm]

MAMA AND PAPA 4min, 16mm, 1963/69 - p. 199, 251, 252, 253 The Power of Visual Taboo, The End of Sexual Taboos: Homosexuality and other Variants
Director: Kurt Kren, Otto Muehl (Austria)

"The unexpected combination of sexual taboo and food provokes both shock and laughter, not merely because of the visual pun but because organs are not often presented to us in "tasteful" display for purposes of eating.

"For a brief moment, the action looks realistic, but then we realize that penis, fluid, and hand are artificial; significantly, this does not lessen the visual shock. Muehl's incessant attacks on our last taboos extend to the public display of bodily functions otherwise considered too private (i.e. too universal) to be viewable in good society." - Amos Vogel

"My work is psychic subversion, aiming at the destruction of the pseudo-morality and ethic of state and order. I am for lewdness, for the demythologization of sexuality.  I make films to provoke scandals, for audiences that are hidebound, perverted by "normalcy", mentally stagnating and conformist ... The worldwide stupefaction of the masses at the hands of artistic, religious, political swine can be stopped only by the most brutal utilization of all available weapons. Pornography is an appropriate means to cure our society from its genital panic.  All kinds of revolt are welcome:  only in this manner will this insane society, product of the fantasies of primeval madmen, finally collapse ... I restrict myself to flinging the food to the beasts:  let them choke on it". - Otto Muehl

HIROSHIMA 16min, 16mm, 1970 - p. 200 The Power of Visual Taboo
Director: M. Ogasawara and Y. Matsukawa (Japan)
Producer: Erik Barnouw

"The eye of a Hiroshima victim, forced open to reveal the damage.  Man's psychological threshold is so low that it has easier to perpetrate such deeds than to show them on a screen.  The American government (aware that it had done something it was best to hide) helped by banning all such footage until recently." - Amos Vogel

A MOVIE 12min, 16mm, 1958 - p. 272, The Ultimate Secret: Death
Director: Bruce Conner (USA)

"One of the most original works of the international film avant-garde, this is a pessimistic comedy of the human condition, consisting of executions, catastrophes, mishaps, accidents, and stubborn feats of ridiculous daring, magically compiled from jungle movies, calendar art, Academy leaders, cowboy films, cartoons, documentaries, and newsreels.  None of the visual material is original; and none is used for its original purpose.  Amidst initial amusement and seeming confusion, an increasingly dark social statement emerges which profoundly disturbs us on a subconscious level. Particularly important are the documentary images of death; the battered bodies of Mussolini and his mistress, suspended upside down; the crash of a waterplane, with the pilot hitting against the fuselage in a brief, terrifying moment; a one-second documentary shot of an execution, "revealed" as if it was a dirty secret, and just as quickly withdrawn; the death of a bridge (wildly swaying, then collapsing), immediately following an optimistic speech by Teddy Roosevelt.  The entire film is a hymn to creative montage." - Amos Vogel

THE ACT OF SEEING WITH ONE'S OWN EYES 32min, 16mm, 1972 - p. 194, 265, 267, The Power of Visual Taboo, The Ultimate Secret: Death
Director: Stan Brakhage (USA)

"A mysterious hand, a white cloth, and a table edge, a fly walks calmly on the sole of a foot, undisturbed. A powerful visual metaphor from the first film to deal with morgue and autopsy, recorded in poetic documentary style by a noted avant-gardist.  Here life and death are inextricable as medical personnel and corpses mingle in close contact.

"Inevitably, it is an avant-garde filmmaker who confronts us for the first time with morgue and autopsy room.  This is an appalling, haunting work of great purity and truth.  It dispassionately records whatever transpires in front of the lens; bodies sliced lengthwise, organs removed, skulls and scalp cut open with electric tools, blood drawn; a fly that walks on the sole of a foot, undisturbed.   There are timeless images: the hands, closed forever upon themselves, the dead eyes, the deft and simple opening of a body's surface, the empty abdominal cage (a hole at the bottom leading to the outside), suddenly poignant clothes (the unexpectedly final attire of murder or accident victims), a penis (at last at peace) attached to an open, gaping body.  Life and death are inextricable here, as doctors and orderlies (never clearly seen) mingle with and manipulate the inert flesh, dead  and live hands often touching its strong close-ups.  After every  act of  carnage, the merciful white sheet descends on the remains, a symbolic gesture reinforced in series of quick, haunting fades.  Then the camera follows (in tracking shots and rapid cuts) a surrealist procession of dimly-lit heaps -- at times still red with blood -- on stretchers and under shrouds, receding into the  distance along bleak corridors under greenish lights.

"A great desire "to see clearly" informs the work -- the film's title derives from the Greek meaning of the term "autopsy" -- a refusal to sentimentalize or to avert one's glance; yet the "objective" filmmaker continuously breaks through to compassion and horrified wonder in his selection of shots, angles, and filmic continuity.

"With almost the entire film photographed in close-up or medium shot and utter silence, form and content are for once perfectly blended to create a subversive work that changes our consciousness. This final demystification of man -- an unforgettable reminder of  our physicality, fragility, mortality -- robs us of metaphysics only to  reintroduce it on another level; for the more physical we are seen to be, the more marvelous becomes the mystery." - Amos Vogel