The opening of the series was followed by a symposium entitled “Whither the Underground: A Discussion on the Independent Film.” 24 The discussion was held in the useum’s auditorium. mong the panellists were filmmaker Robert Breer, cartoonist and painter Robert Osborne and critics Susan Sontag, and Judith Christ, the later a film critic for the New York Herald Tribune. The event’s significance resonated in various discursive contexts when a transcription of the symposium notes was made available at the request of ladies magazines such as Glamour and Mademoiselle, and the arts magazine Artforum.25 These requests manifest the success of the series in drawing attention from middle class audiences.
Van Dyke framed the discussion in terms of the possibilities opened up by the availability of 16mm equipment. Van Dyke stated that this had “led to an interest in probing the behaviour of human beings with a minimum of interference by the film- maker. It has also led to the idea that a single individual can make an effective film.”26 Hence, he asserted the objective nature of the camera technology, and the individual filmmaker’s creative control as the basic components of “the personal film”, whose forms were “almost as varied as the number of films produced.”27
These emphases positioned these films firmly within the parameters of modern art and science.
Moreover, Van Dyke resolved the accusations of pornography that had previously caused uproar, pointing out that sex was just one amongst the variety of themes in these films. ccounting for o ’s selection processes, he said that
We found that, naturally enough, sexual behavior was one of the elements found in many of the films. But there was more than this. There was a concern with how man made his living, as in MR.
22 Variety “Underground Cinema.” 23 Variety “Underground Cinema.” 24
The Independent Film Symposium. November 18, 1965. Film, 176. MoMA Archives, NY.
25 Elizabeth Shaw to Willard Van Dyke. Film, 176. MoMA Archives, NY.
26 The Independent Film Symposium. November 18, 1965. Film, 176. MoMA Archives, NY. 27 The Independent Film Symposium. November 18, 1965, p. 2. Film, 176. MoMA Archives,
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HAYASHI. There was a return to childhood fantasy as in SIN OF THE FLESHAPOIDS. There were artists who used symbology in the most contemporary terms, as in SCORPIO RISING and in Ed
Emshwiller’s unfinished work entitled RELATIVITY. And there were the delightful clarifying films of Stan Vanderbeek and Bob Breer. Without endorsing or condemning the drugs and homoerotic content of Scorpio
Rising, Van Dyke offered a different perspective on what others had considered
blasphemous. Additionally, through the list he stressed the diversity of artistic expression which could be read as signs of their freedom to explore matters such as human labour, imagination, popular culture, and society. Van Dyke finalised his introduction by defending o ’s commitment to present new work, engaging with the idea that modern art needs challenges in order to keep itself alive.
After the screening, Van Dyke directed the debate towards questions of innovation in terms of form and content, and discussed the presumed lower status of these films in relation to theatrical cinema and other arts.28 Breer underscored these films’ subversive stances “in terms of a revolutionary attitude toward society and more specifically towards conventional cinema itself.” 29 He also acknowledged that the label underground was as misused by journalists as the tag pop art had been before. Eventually, they all agreed that there were no clear-cut themes and concepts which could encompass the New Cinema’s experimentations, noting the disparity between Breer’s and nger’s work as an example. This conclusion contrasted with the cinema of the New Waves coming from France, Poland and Czechoslovakia where the participants of the symposium saw more readily identifiable aesthetic directions.
Trying to answer for lack of definition and popularity of the New American Cinema beyond the main avant-garde film circles, Sontag noted that “I don’t just believe that it is because there aren’t talented people in this country (…) But perhaps it is ultimately an economic thing.”30
This comment led to one last observation by Christ regarding Hollywood’s sophisticated production and distribution infrastructures. Christ thought that Hollywood’s infrastructures and economic scale would have curtailed filmmakers’ creativity if artists were more original the less they are subjected to external forces. Sontag noted such a romantic idea was erroneous and, at some point, attempted to examine the wider industrial conditions affecting experimental and
28 The Independent Film Symposium. November 18, 1965, p. 4. Film, 176. MoMA Archives,
NY.
29The Independent Film Symposium. November 18, 1965, p. 5. Film, 176. MoMA Archives,
NY.
30 The Independent Film Symposium. November 18, 1965. Questions, p. 5. Film, 176. MoMA
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independent filmmakers in the U.S. The discussion, however, diverted and paid little attention to merican experimental and independent cinemas’ infrastructural relation with theatrical cinema. The debate thus reached a dead end.
The programme received wide coverage in the general press. The series allowed the Film Library to update its film collection and rental service. The rhetoric of the presentation emphasised academic rigour and artistic freedom. o ’s bid for wider visibility for experimental cinema concurred with other developments in
audiovisual arts practices. These advances raised further expectations of philanthropic and corporate support.