Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

A film crew is at work in Central Park. The director William Greaves is shooting a scene: a woman and a man argue and their relationship ends. The same scene is shot again and again with different actors. Greaves does not explain to the crew what he is doing; he gives vague answers to questions and his instructions contradict each other. The crew becomes uneasy. At one point the technicians gather among themselves and start discussing the director, and that meeting is recorded too. There are three cameras: one on the actors, one on the crew, one on the park. The three images are shown at once. William Greaves directs. It is an American production shot in 1968. The film went unseen for a long time; it came into circulation only years later and drew attention then. Greaves was an experienced director of television documentaries and this work shows his experimental side. Its subject is not the scene being shot; the real subject is the crew's reaction to authority and the film provokes it deliberately. The recording in which the crew criticises the director was included, and that section stands at the centre. A second part was shot in later years and returned to the same material. Its limit is form; the structure is deliberately scattered and it offers the viewer no story. Who it is for: viewers who like experimental cinema and work about its own making. Who it is not for: there is no story, the sound quality is poor, and the narrative scattered.