Turn on, Tune in, Drop out! 5 psychedelic short films, broadcast on the French/German tv channel “arte” on 2007-07-16 Length: 47 min. “Be-In” USA 1967, 7 min.
Director and writer: Jerry Abrams; music: Blue Cheer (unreleased track)
Captures the spirit and essence of the great San Francisco Human Be-In of January 14, 1967. Ten thousand people imbued with peace, love and euphoria. Set to hard rock such as only San Francisco blues can produce. “Be-In” features footage of Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Timothy Leary, Michael McClure, Lenore Kandel and The Grateful Dead. “Beatles Electronique” USA 1966-69, 3 min.
Directors and writers: Nam June Paik, Jud Yalkut; music: Kenneth Lerner (unreleased)
“Beatles Electronique” is a mesmerizing improvisation that reveals Paik’s early engagement with the manipulation of pop cultural material. Against a looped electronic soundtrack, images of the Beatles from “A Hard Day’s Night” and performing at Shea Stadium are transformed into an eerily hypnotic study. “San Francisco” Great Britain 1967/68, 15 min.
Director and writer: Anthony Stern; music: Pink Floyd - Interstellar Overdrive (unreleased version, recorded at Thompson
Private Recording Studios on 31 October 1966 (or there about))
Anthony Stern’s “San Francisco” could be described as a city film and allied with Jean Vigo’s “A Propos de Nice” (France, 1930) and Walther Ruttman’s “Berlin: die Sinfonie der Großstadt” (Berlin: Symphony of a City, Germany, 1927). (…) The music that accompanies the film is occasionally synched to various San Franciscan musicians - march bands, street musicians, bands on stage - it was, however, recorded in London (…) and was played by The Pink Floyd. The track, ‘Interstellar Overdrive’, at first drives the film, the flickering and flashing images matching the music’s propulsive beat. Later, as the music calms, our attention is led more explicitly to the images. Now the rapid cutting decreases and the film concentrates on a house and the ritualistic occult activity contained therein. (…) These changes in music and image create a focus point and then, as the music returns triumphantly to its original pattern, a grand finale. The use of ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ came about through an intermix of relations between Stern, The Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett, and filmmaker Peter Whitehead. All three had lived in Cambridge and all three had had painting exhibitions in the same upper room of the Lion and Lamb pub in the village of Milton. Stern later worked on several Whitehead films, including “Tonite Lets All Make Love in London” (1967) and, through his friendship with Barrett, succeeded in bringing the three together again in London. This lead to the use of ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ in both “Tonite” and then in “San Francisco”. William Fowler. “Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable” USA/Great Britain 1967, 12 min.
Director and writer: Ronald Nameth; music: The Velvet Underground (unreleased live versions) “Eyetoon” USA 1967/68, 8 min.
Director and writer: Jerry Abrams; music: David Litwin, Different Fur Trading Co (unreleased)
“The sea, tranquil and violent, is the ultimate symbol for Jerry Abrams’ ‘EYETOON’ and the ultimate equivalent to making love - his concern in this short and visually dazzling film. Abrams contrasts the rushing faces of New York and a highway juggernaut with the peaceful joining of bodies in a Gjon Mili-like stroboscopic sequence - always with a burbling, flashing maelstrom of emotions underlying and double-exposing with the bodies. It is visually lovely, technically first-rate and impossible to ignore. The graphic sex is economically handled.” - John L. Wasserman, San Francisco Chronicle
“The film ‘EYETOON’ would seem to be the perfect synthesis of the metaphysical, spiritual and sexual feelings of a sensitive experimental filmmaker.” - Reverend Earl Shagley