Ebert Symposium 2023: Film: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)
- Event Date: Tuesday, April 18, 2023
- Time: 7:30 pm–9:00 pm (CDT)
- Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
On Tuesday, April 18, join us at a screening of Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968), an experimental documentary film by Black Emmy award-winning filmmaker William Greaves (external link) that was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry (external link) in 2015. Ebert Symposium keynote speaker Amir George, artistic director of Kartemquin Films, selected the film and will share introductory remarks.
In her film essay, Maria San Filippo described the film as "a unique 1960s time capsule, a telling look at the myriad tensions involved in film creation—a film on the making of a film—with three camera crews recording different parts of the process and personalities involved (director, actors, crew, bystanders). Though Greaves is undoubtedly the film's visionary auteur—notable for an African-American filmmaker in the 1960s—it is truly a film made collectively by Greaves and his multi-racial crew, whose staging of an on-set rebellion becomes the film's drama and its platform for sociopolitical critique and revolutionary philosophy."
"In his one-of-a-kind fiction/documentary hybrid Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, director William Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York’s Central Park, leaving them to try to figure out what kind of movie they’re making. A couple enacts a break-up scenario over and over, a documentary crew films a crew filming the crew, locals wander casually into the frame: the project defies easy description. Yet this wildly innovative sixties counterculture landmark remains one of the most tightly focused and insightful movies ever made about making movies." Criterion Channel
This event is presented by the Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies (external link).
More details about the event can be found on the College of Media event posting (external link).
Contact
For further information on this event, contact the Museum Information Desk at spurlock-museum@illinois.edu (email link) or (217) 333-2360
All participants are welcome. To request disability-related accommodations for this event, please contact Brian Cudiamat at cudiamat@illinois.edu (email link) or (217) 244-5586.