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Blending narrative, experimental and documentary
filmmaking, Symbio was shot on-location in Central Park during the
turbulent summer of 1968. Its "film-outside-of-a-film" format
recounts the uprising of a crew against its tyrannical director (Greaves
playing himself) as captured by an accompanying documentary crew. This genre
hybrid constructs several levels of cinematic reality, making for a fascinating
discourse on reflexivity and prompting the question "How much is real?".
Presumably too far ahead of its time, Symbio seems a clear progenitor
of such films as This is Spinal Tap, Living in Oblivion and
The Blair Witch Project. The high-ë60s feel of the film, which incorporates
split-screen imaging and a Miles Davis score, also contains discourses on
such timely sociopolitical issues as abortion, gay sexuality, and pop psychology.
Despite numerous festival screenings over the past decade (including Sundance
in 1992), critical praise from J. Hoberman and Robert Stam among others,
and actor-director Steve Buscemi adopting the film as a pet project, Symbio remains without distribution ñ an undiscovered gem of the American New Wave.
Greavesí résumé reveals a modern-day renaissance
man, equally and outstandingly entrenched in the often inseparable worlds
of the arts and public service. Called "the most versatile and durable
of African-American independents" by J. Hoberman, Greaves was one of
seven children born to a West Indies immigrant cab driver and sometimes
minister on 135th Street in Harlem, in 1926 (1). He won
scholarships to Greenwich Villageís Little Red Schoolhouse and Stuyvesant
High School and briefly studied engineering at City College, departing to
join the renowned Pearl Primus Dance Troupe. Greaves got his start as an
actor at the American Negro Theater, which led to a brief stint on Broadway
in the late 1940s (Finianís Rainbow, Lost in the Stars) and
eventually brought him roles in several of the black-cast film productions
popular at the time. In films such as Miracle in Harlem (1947), Souls
of Sins (1949) and the Louis de Rochemont-produced Lost Boundaries (1949), Greaves often played progressive, self-assured characters confident
in their African-American identities, roles which "clearly prefigured
many of those played by Sidney Poitier in the next decade, [making one]
apt to wonder whether Greaves would have become one of the crossover stars
of the fifties had he remained in screen acting" (2).
Instead, Greaves became fed up with the Uncle Tom-type roles predominantly
available to African-Americans at the time, coming to the realization that
he "had to get on the other side of the camera because [Hollywood]
was messing with the image of black people with impunity" (3).
Like Melvin Van Peebles and others frustrated by the limitations of commercial
cinema, Greaves left the country in order to practice his craft in a less
racist climate.
Greaves accepted a position on the production staff of the John Grierson-founded
National Film Board of Canada, and over the next eight years worked as editor,
writer and director on over 80 films. Among the most notable of these was
his 1958 cinéma vérité documentary Emergency
Ward, shot entirely in a Montreal hospital and in many ways anticipating
Frederick Wisemanís Hospital, made a decade later. While Greavesí
career flourished in Canada, he remained largely unknown back in the United
States, as the National Film Board of Canadaís was rarely able to broadcast
beyond domestic markets. Emergency Ward managed to slip through to
the screening rooms of New Yorkís burgeoning underground scene, where it
made a strongly favorable impression on pioneering avant-garde filmmaker
Shirley Clarke. She recommended Greaves to the head of the United States
Information Agencyís film division, George Stevens, Jr., who succeeded in
luring Greaves back to the U.S. as a freelance director/producer based out
of New Yorkís United Nations headquarters.
Thus Greaves began what was to become a distinguished, prolific career
of making films marked by a distinctly African-American perspective of reality,
earning him the designation of "Chronicler of the Black Experience"
(a moniker Greaves dislikes, feeling that it ëghettoizesí him as a black
filmmaker rather than a filmmaker who is black.) Two of his most acclaimed
projects for the U.S.I.A. were Wealth of a Nation (1964), a provocative
documentary on the tradition of dissent in America, and The First World
Festival of Negro Arts (1966), which captured a Senegalese celebration
of post-colonialist artistic achievement in Africa and the African Diaspora.
Also upon returning to New York, Greaves resumed training at the renowned
Actors Studio, where he had been a long-time member and instructor in the
techniques of Stanislavski, Method, Strasberg and psychodrama. Greaves also
worked as producer and host, from 1968 to 1970, on National Education Televisionís Black Journal, for which he won an Emmy in 1970.
Such a detailed account of Greavesí achievements (and
these only through the end of the 1960s) is necessary to consider given
his curiously under-recognized reputation. Scott MacDonald notes that Greavesí
"name should be a household word, at least for those who consider themselves
savvy about modern film history" (4). That Greaves,
having produced over 200 documentaries altogether (writing and/or directing
more than half), has not been more celebrated seems attributable to several
unfortunate realities: the Sisyphusian struggles of all documentary filmmakers,
but especially those who are African-American; Greavesí resolute decision
to remain independent (his sole Hollywood outing was as executive producer
on Universal Picturesí 1981 Richard Pryor vehicle Bustiní Loose);
and the vastly under-appreciated history of Greavesí one film with potential
for wide mainstream appeal, 1968ís Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One.
1968 was a tumultuous year, not only within the film industry but throughout
the world, as social protests and political movements shook the Establishment.
Civic unrest infiltrated every corner of the globe, varying in specific
movements but all concerned with uprooting authoritarianism in all its political,
social and economic permutations. Among those fighting were Marxist-Leninists
in Western Europe, Maoists in China, anti-Stalinists in Eastern Europe,
anti-imperialists in the third world, and the counter-culture movement in
America.
In 1968, great changes were taking place within the international cinema
community, as well. Franceís New Wave movement, a decade old, was advancing
beyond Cahiers du Cinéma criticism to direct activism aimed
against patriarchal traditions in filmmaking. Student-led demonstrations
shook French universities beginning in May, nearly toppling the De Gaulle
regime, in protest of its undemocratic practices in the film industry, among
other civic agencies. A coalition of filmmakers, led by Jean-Luc Godard
and François Truffaut, succeeded in closing down the 1968 Cannes
Film Festival and narrowly preventing the government-decreed termination
of New Wave mentor Henri Langlois from his position as director of the French
Cinémathèque.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the revolutionary ideas of artistic
visionaries such as Bertolt Brecht and Jean Rouch had paved the way for
an American New Wave. The Hollywood studio system at the end of the 1960s
was just emerging from a decade-long downswing brought on by a shifting
commercial marketplace and fierce competition from television. The first
milestone from the burgeoning American auteur movement had come a year earlier,
with Arthur Pennís Bonnie and Clyde (1967), though that film suffered
a critical and public backlash which slowed its influence. Not until Easy
Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969), shot on a minuscule budget and directly
voicing counter-culture ideology, would Hollywoodís new golden age really
take off. In 1968, however, the center of attention was still focused on
New Yorkís underground scene, where avant-gardists such as Andy Warhol,
Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage were making experimental, low-budget groundbreaking
works.
By the summer of 1968, Greaves had secured financial backing and assembled
a cast of his Actors Studio students for his first feature film, to be shot
on location in Central Park. Greaves gave his cast and crew only a scanty
premise of the proposed filmís unscripted narrative: an independent director
(to be played by Greaves) shoots screen tests with several pairs of actors
for a low-budget feature tentatively titled Over the Cliff. The scene
which Greaves has his auditioning actors read involves an argument between
husband and wife and contains discussion of the wifeís abortions and the
husbandís alleged homosexuality. This scenario was intended as the initial
segment of a multi-part project ("take one" of a series of "takes")
described by Greaves as a "feature-length we-donít-know-what".
Four cameras would be used: one operated by the primary crew and focused
on the actors; another on Greaves and his crew as they filmed the actors;
and a third quasi-documentary crew shooting any on-lookers or action around
the set (Greaves somewhat bewilderingly instructs his third cameraman, "Youíre
in charge of filming this film being filmed".) Greaves himself used
a fourth camera for miscellaneous coverage.
Purposely vague and open-ended, the filmís premise was
one perfectly suited to a low-budget project by a first-time feature director.
It could be shot on location, with minimal crew and equipment (natural lighting
and handheld camera were sufficient) and continuity was of no concern. The
structure of the film was to be assembled during editing, the crucial step
in transforming the disorder from the film shoot into a coherent product:
"The film had to be chaos, but chaos of a very special character: intelligible
chaos. It had to have a classic flow of some kind. It had to hold your attention,
even though it was supposed to be a lousy film" (5).
There was an additional covert agenda within Greavesí conception of a film
so vaguely constructed that it prompted frustrated soundman Jonathan Gordon
to complain that it contained "no plot that we can see, no end that
we can see, action we canít follow". Greaves planned, in his role as
director, to so antagonize the crew with his chaotic production and purposely
inept direction that they would be driven to rebel. Adam Knee observes an
interesting comparison between Greavesí approach and independent filmmaker
and theorist Maya Derenís "notion of the ëcontrolled accidentí, of
allowing events to evolve naturally and spontaneously while keeping them
focused and directed" (6). In striving to create cinéma
vérité, Greaves was careful not to over-determine whatever
course the film was to take, contemplating on the upcoming shoot in his
pre-production notes: "Our problem, or rather my problem, is to get
out of natureís way and let nature tell her story. Thatís what a good director
is ñ a person who gets his ego out of his own way, he is at best a collaborator
and servant of nature...but who, paradoxically, firmly controls the conditions
of spontaneity, theatricality and drama on the set" (7).
Greavesí careful construction of his directorial strategy
runs concurrent to Stephen Mamberís often-quoted definition of cinéma
vérité:
The filmmaker attempts to eliminate as much as possible the barriers
between subject and audience. These barriers are technical (large crews,
studio sets, tripod-mounted equipment, special lights, costumes, and
makeup), procedural (scripting, acting, directing), and structural (standard
editing devices, traditional forms of melodrama, suspense, etc.) Cinéma
vérité is a practical working method based upon a faith
in unmanipulated reality, a refusal to tamper with life as it presents
itself. (8)
Whether Symbio truly adheres to Mamberís qualifications
of cinéma vérité is debatable: Greaves does
employ split-screen imaging, a fairly sophisticated editing technique which
certainly denaturalizes the "unmanipulated reality" that it professes
to capture. So, too, does Symbio wind up having a quite cohesive
narrative structure (mostly the result of editing) which does contain undeniable
elements of drama, suspense and character development. A climax could even
be plotted as the moment when actress Patricia Ree Gilbert storms off the
set, which triggers a turn of events whereby Symbioís disgruntled
crew confronts the director and ultimately forges a partial resolution.
Therein is the crucial paradox inherent to all of cinéma vérité ñ that not having a production strategy is in itself a strategy.
As Hoberman remarks, "Of course, itís precisely the manipulative nature
of Greavesí nondirection that makes [Symbio] so extraordinary --
and so comic" (9).
The title of Greavesí film refers to a term coined by
social philosopher Arthur Bentley in his essays on social theory. Bentley
used the term "symbiotaxiplasm" to refer to all the elements and
events that transpire in any given environment, which affect and are affected
by human beings (10). By inserting "psycho"
into Bentleyís term, Greaves modified it to his specific qualifications,
which he defines in the following way:
[ëSymbiopsychotaxiplasmí] affirms more aggressively the role that
human psychology and creativity play in shaping the total environment
ñ while at the same time, these very environmental factors continually
affect and determine human psychology and creativity. Thus everything
that happens in the [Symbio] environment interrelates and affects the
psychology of the people and, indeed, the creative process itself. (11)
Two other films made and released in 1968-69 stand out for their relation
to Symbio, both in thematic and stylistic terms and in representing
renegade directorsí staunch efforts to retain creative control of their
artistic vision from studios blind to everything but the bottom line. The
ill-fated travails of John Cassavetesí and Haskell Wexlerís respective 1968
projects, Faces and Medium Cool, make the case that perhaps
Symbio was saved from the studio-mangling fate of these two films
by not finding immediate distribution. Additionally, both films share with
Symbio an unflagging intent to represent realism via the inspired
use of improvised dialogue, location shooting and other unconventional techniques.
The similarities between Symbio and Medium
Cool are particularly interesting in that both films are hybrids of
fiction and documentary and as such are preoccupied with questions of reality,
the visual medium and their own reflexivity. Furthermore, both films are
book-ended by shots of their directors aiming their respective cameras at
the spectator, evoking the nearly identical opening shot of Jean-Luc Godardís
1963 Contempt, another watershed film in the reflexive canon. Godard
himself once said that the only completely honest film would show a camera
filming itself in the mirror, and while Greavesí experiment in reflexivity
is infinitely more entertaining that Godardís proposal would seem, they
are based on the same ingenious concept of "having the pro-filmic camera
eye, which in conventional cinema slyly and surreptitiously equates itself
with the vision of the spectator, focus on the spectators themselves. It
is as if the apparatus itself were nodding at us, in a cinematographic equivalent
of Brechtian direct address to the audience" (12).
In this way, perhaps Symbioís closest relative is Jim McBrideís 1968
film David Holzmanís Diary, which designs itself on Godardís axiom
by being a pseudo-autobiographical portrait of a beatnik cinephile who delivers
a protracted monologue into the camera, visible in a mirrored reflection.
In breaking the proverbial fourth wall, Greaves acknowledges and celebrates
the power of the filmic image (and the process of making images) to transfix
viewers. Footage of gawking standers-by is incorporated throughout the film
to humorous effect, and one amusing sequence shows a policeman on horseback
approaching the crew to verify their shooting permit. After assenting to
being filmed, he inquires with barely contained curiosity, "What kind
of picture are you making?". One boisterous group of children is attracted
to the set like moths to light. They scramble for the crewís attention before
one precocious girl succeeds in soliciting an impromptu screen test: "I
know youíre looking for a new star, a new face," she announces, "Let
me introduce myself". Filmís ability to transform not only life but lives is not lost on the city youths. "Weíve already got you
on film," Greaves drolly tells the young girl, "so youíll be famous".
Furthermore, the filmís reflexivity asserts the power of the director,
s/he who corrals the multitude of available images into a pared-down, personal
vision of reality. In an early sequence, as Greaves instructs his crew on
shooting desirable extraneous action, he spots an elderly woman walking
her dog and suggests filming her. Instantaneously, the screen splits to
show the congruous images of Greavesí directing his crewís attention alongside
the old woman and dog being filmed.
Greavesí Brechtian "nod" to the spectator occurs
towards the end of Symbioís thoroughly captivating opening sequence,
which introduces the filmís preoccupation with reflexivity, voyeurism and
experimentalism and quickly establishes itself to be unlike any film made
before or since. Symbioís initial sequence interrupts a couple mid-way
through a scene of marital discord, and several anomalies are immediately
apparent within the mise en scène: visible time code, choppy
editing, awkward camera angles, jerky or unmotivated camera movements, rather
trite dialogue, and actors who appear to be reading woodenly off cue cards.
Before such incongruity can fully register, however, the screen splits into
two images, different angles of the scene at hand, and just as quickly alternates
among split-screen shots of several other pairs of actors continuing the
same sequence of dialogue.
The screen finally widens back to full size as actors
Don Fellows and Patricia Ree Gilbert hurl curses and accusations. By
displaying scenes (in duplicate) of duplicated dialogue, performed by
duplicate actors, Greaves immediately alerts the spectator to the duplicity
of the images being shown. MacDonald notes that "the switch from
one level to another in the preface sets up the overall rhythm of the
film" (13). By "levels", MacDonald
is referring to the multi-tiered representation of "reality"
which Symbio constructs.
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| Patricia
Ree Gilbert and Don Fellows |
Theories which link the cinematic spectator to voyeurism
posit the necessary identification, on the part of the spectator, with the
image from which s/he is to derive pleasure in looking. The denaturalized
technique of split-screen imaging prevents the spectator from identifying
wholly with the spectacle (as conventional cinema is wont to do), "since
the images are ëhungí on the screen like paintings in a gallery, we are
forced to choose which image to contemplate, yet the very multiplicity of
images makes it virtually impossible to ëloseí ourselves in any one"
(14). The use of split-screen thus inhibits scopophilia
yet, paradoxically, in providing a multiplicity of images (more and more
to see) feeds the spectatorís demand for visual pleasure.
In his definition of cinéma vérité, Stephen
Mamber refers indirectly to Brechtís technique of distancing (of both the
spectators from the characters and of the actors from their roles.) As a
long-time actor and teacher of actors, Greaves is fascinated by the constructedness
of acting and incorporates this into Symbioís discourse. Mamber notes
that even within cinéma vérité, acting is necessarily
artificial: "Perhaps the most common criticism of [cinéma
vérité] is that a person constantly subjected to a camera
can never truly forget its presence, that he is never ënaturalí". (15) Acknowledging this inevitability, Greaves nevertheless strives for authenticity
by urging improvisation and by keeping multiple cameras focused on his actors
even when not ëperformingí, in the hope of capturing spontaneous emotion.
The screen test dialogue itself is purposely banal ñ Greaves refers to it
as "neutral" ñ yet his intention, as expressed in his pre-production
notes, is for it to become "transformed into something truly important
and rewarding when the actors become inspired" (16).
The increasingly testy relationship between actors Fellows and Gilbert is,
in fact, the catalyst that induces their performed argument to gradually
seem more "real".
Though Greaves does ultimately succeed in provoking inspired performances
from his actors, Symbioís opening sequence is a prime example of
the hackneyed histrionics responsible for much of the filmís tongue-in-cheek
humor and referred to in a cleverly reflexive way when Freddy tells the
melodramatic Alice, "Stop acting, will you?". This poses the question
of whether Fellows and Gilbert are in fact poor actors, or instead were
directed by Greaves to act poorly. Additionally, is Greaves merely playing
himself or is his role as director a performance as well? With both questions,
the latter options seem likely, though it is difficult to tell within the
confines of the film. Consider the scene in which Gilbert, in discussion
with Greaves, puzzles out the motivations of her character: "I have
the feeling, you see, that sheís going home. Sheís going home, sheís moving...so
what Iíll try to do is walk slow but look like Iím walking fast...I donít
know how to do that".
Gilbertís words can alternately be construed as the artistic
pretensions of an incompetent actress, or the clever role-playing of a good
actress portraying a bad actress. Certainly the debut performance
of Susan Anspach, a talented actress who would go on to star in several
iconic films of the 1970s including Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson,
1970) and Play it Again, Sam (Woody Allen, 1972), makes the case
that Greaves urged his actors to play with notions of "good" and
"bad" acting. Greaves seems to be making the point that acting,
particularly in a performance intended to evoke "realness", is
not so easily quantifiable as good or bad, nor does banal dialogue automatically
constitute a flaw ("Human life isnít necessarily well written",
the film reminds us). Greaves himself admits that in order to instigate
the desired crew revolt, he must be perceived as incompetent, that "for
this particular film to work, a flawed, vulnerable persona was essential"
(17). A veteran actor, Greaves is successful at rendering
this flawed version of himself, as commented on by Terry Filgate, director
of photography, during one of the crewís meetings: "What throws me
is that [Greaves] has in a sense written himself a part in the film, and
as soon as you turn the camera on, he turns on. And heís like a bad actor
ñ and he doesnít turn off into his natural self until the camera stops".
Indeed, Greaves himself warns the spectator, in direct address to the camera
during his first appearance on-screen, "Donít take me seriously".
As the camera lingers, within the opening sequence, on the last pair of
couples to be introduced, we become aware of a steadily increasing hum distorting
the soundtrack. The camera cuts away to a candid shot of two on-lookers
whom, it is revealed, are not eavesdropping on a public quarrel but are
instead watching a film shoot in progress. Thus the spectator, initially
unaware that what s/he is viewing is not the film itself but a film-within-the-film,
falls prey to the reflexive "gag" (a technique employed memorably
by Preston Sturges at the start of Sullivanís Travels [1942]).
Symbioís title sequence, which follows the prologue discussed above,
continues this discourse on cinematic voyeurism. Accompanied by Miles Davisí
score (as well as the persistent whine of the faulty sound equipment, cleverly
mixed in to the soundtrack), the camera acts as a veritable peeping Tom
by alighting on park-goers of all ages, races and sexes but notably lingering
on several amorous couples. Within this sequence, a series of images shows
progression through the life cycle, a cinematic trick memorably performed
by Dziga Vertov in Man with a Movie Camera (1929). A couple is spied
kissing passionately, followed by new parents shown with their baby, proceeding
on to shots of playing children, then grown men and women enjoying various
recreations. Greaves himself acknowledges this in a remark directly following
the title sequence: "The important thing is that I want to make sure
that everything that happens on the set, whether itís off-camera or among
the crew, or whether itís being shot...we should constantly be relating
to sexuality".
The articulation of sexual anxieties which constitutes the crux of the
coupleís quarrel was highly incendiary for its time ("Youíve been killing
my babies one after another," the Alice character berates husband Freddy,
"Ever since weíve been married Iíve had abortion after abortion".)
Viewing the film from todayís standpoint does not quell the impact of these
blunt sexual proclamations, which continue to break taboos and shun political
correctness. "Listen, you skinny little faggot", Alice rails at
Freddy, "I am fed up, absolutely fed up with this happening every time
we go out, wherever weíre going...youíre trying to get with somebody, or on somebody ñ I donít know what it is you boys do". Freddy answers
her harshly: "...[A]ll I can say is itís about time you started
[therapy] because you need it. Just remember, the person who says
the other one is sick is always the sickest of all, baby".
Symbio thus trains a careful eye on late ë60s sexual discourse,
when the tenets of psychotherapy had trickled down to mainstream society
in bastardized pop psychology form. "Youíre projecting, Alice,"
Freddy says in response to Aliceís accusations of his infidelity and homosexuality,
"Youíre trying to see things in me that you see in your own self".
Greaves does not hesitate to turn an equally unflinching eye on his performers
themselves, out of role but still on-screen. Puzzling out his characterís
sexual personification, actor Fellows is recorded saying, "I donít
know whether to act a little faggy", as, mischievously, weíre shown
voyeuristic footage of a strapping young man rowing bare-chested across
the lake. "I have explored that kind of thing," Fellows continues,
"and I donít know whether this is a faggy fag or a butch fag".
That it was so sexually and reflexively defiant is one
possible explanation for the lack of fanfare that greeted Greaves when he
began in the early 1970s to seek a distributor for the completed Symbio.
Not only had the American public seldom seen such a confounding hybrid of
film genres (fiction, documentary, experimental, avant-garde, cinéma
vérité) ñ but, as Robert Stam notes, critics are
immediately wary of reflexive films, which "form an object of paranoia
for mainstream critics, who see reflexive filmmakers as spoilsports who
deprive the cinematic game of its illusion" (18).
Pulling back the curtain to show the spectator what goes on behind camera
was Greavesí intent ñ though not as a romanticist paean to filmmaking, as
is the design of many reflexive films (Felliniís 8 1/2, Truffautís Day for Night), or even purely for purposes of satire and parody
(Sullivanís Travels, Robert Altmanís The Player). Rather,
Greaves was concerned primarily with inspecting the presence of the curtain
itself.
The two so-called "palace-revolt" sequences, in which Greavesí
crew secretly meets and films themselves discussing their dissatisfaction
with the production, are the most complex moments of reflexivity in the
film. The first of these sequences opens with a disclaimer from production
manager Bob Rosen, who explains their motives thusly: "Weíre just going
to rap a little bit about the film. Weíll get into it and when we get into
it the people out there [looks and motions into camera] will understand
and weíll explain it as we go along". These sessions, in which Greavesí
crew functions as a kind of Greek chorus, constitute the cinematic equivalent
of what Walter Benjamin termed the "art of interruptions", referring
specifically to reflexivity in epic theater.
More than any other moment in the film, these sequences
call attention to the artifice and operations of cinema by most pressingly
posing the question of how much of what weíre watching is real. The single
most successful technique used to this effect is that of Rosenís employment
of direct address in assuring the spectator, "The director does not
know that weíre photographing this scene". In his discussions of the
film, Greaves maintains that this was indeed the case, saying "I had
no idea that they were doing this. It was only later that they came to me
and handed me this big pile of film" (19). Yet, even
this reality is essentially unknowable, as Bob Rosen goes on to speculate,
"For all anybody knows, [Greaves] is standing right outside the door,
and heís directing this whole scene...Nobody out there [in the viewing audience]
knows whether weíre for real".
The crewís rebellion also constitutes the main thread of political allegory
which runs through Symbio, intended as a satirical commentary on
both the patriarchal ideology imposed by conventional commercial cinema
and the rigid hierarchical structuring of film productions (which elevate
the director to revered, godlike status). It is interesting to note that
in Symbio, Greaves directs a largely white cast and crew, quite exceptional
in 1968. "The film is rebellion!", exalts Greaves in his pre-production
comments, "Rebellion against traditional cinema form. The hippies on
the crew are for love and rebellion, in contradiction to the screen test
characters, Alice and Freddy, who are suburbanites, caught in a life of
conformity" (20). The appearance of Victor, the touchingly
eloquent homeless alcoholic who wanders onto the Symbio set, voices
a poignantly nihilistic stream of consciousness against the increasingly
oppressive world order of the late ë60s. Symbio is foremost intended
as a paean to rebellion against oppression in the world at large, as Greaves
tells his crew when they assemble to confront him: "This sort of palace
revolt which is taking place is not dissimilar to the sort of revolution
thatís taking place in America today, in the sense that I represent the
establishment, and Iíve been trying to get you to do certain things which
youíve become in a sense disenchanted with".
Ultimately, Symbio seems to reinforce the directorís paramount authority
in the filmmaking process, primarily by Greaves according himself an impenetrable,
lofty omnipresence over the production. According to the idealistic musing
of one crew member who argues against the palace revolt, "A directorís
film is his mind photographing the world, and I think if you say youíre
going to show him whatís in his mind or what ought to be in his mind, youíre
taking away the directorís film from the director". That this declaration
is voiced over accompanying footage of Greaves wandering dejectedly, tortured
genius-like, along the setís periphery and is followed by another crew member
responding, "The thing is, we wonder if the director knows whatís
in his own mind" lends the point some comic buoyancy. Yet, within every
frame can be found luminous illustration of Greaves showcasing his considerable
auteurism. Even the palace revolt sequences, allegedly filmed without Greavesí
knowledge, were selected by him for inclusion in the finished product. Films
are a collaborative effort, Symbio seems to be saying, but they arise
and are borne along by the directorís singular vision.
Among the accouterments which give Symbio its
high ë60s feel is the jazz score composed and performed by Miles Davis.
However, jazz was chosen less for its evocation of an era than for its improvised,
radical nature, as Greaves explains: "[Symbio] was heavily influenced
by jazz, which, to me as a black man, is an attempt on the part of an enchained
human spirit to break free from the prison bars of mechanical tempo and
to liberate itself. Analogically, traditional dramatic structure was for
me a conventional prison from which I sought to escape with the free style
of the film" (21). In his brief but adulatory mention
of Symbio in the preface to the new edition of Reflexivity in
Film and Literature, Robert Stam notes the filmís crucial relationship
to jazz: "The film is built, like jazz itself, on signifying ëmistakesí:
the film runs out, the camera jams, and the actors become restless and irritable.
The film analogizes jazzís relation to the European mainstream by performing
a filmic critique of dominant cinema conventions and subtly evoking, in
a tour de force of improvisation, multiple resistances against diverse authoritarianisms
and oppressions" (22).
Greavesí filmmaking career is fifty years young and still going strong.
His most recent project is a documentary on Dr. Ralph Johnson Bunche, who
served as Undersecretary General of the United Nations for two decades and
was the first African-American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1950. Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey is due for broadcast on PBS in
February 2001. Meanwhile, Symbio remained in obscurity for 22 years
until Brooklyn Museum curators unearthed the filmís only print for a 1990
retrospective of Greavesí work (titled, of course, "William Greaves:
Chronicler of the African-American Experience".) The screening garnered
a highly enthusiastic response, and Greaves was urged to search for distribution
along the film festival circuit. To date, Symbio has been screened
at the Sundance, Munich, San Sebastion (Spain), Sydney, Paris, San Turino
(Italy), Graz (Austria), Goteberg (Sweden), Denver, Hamptons International
and Lake Placid film festivals.
Accepted as a non-competitive entry into the 1992 Sundance
Film Festival, Symbio was screened to an audience that included actor-director
Steve Buscemi (Resevoir Dogs, Trees Lounge) who remembers
being duly impressed by both the film and the performative experience of
the screening itself: "...while I was watching this movie, the projector
broke down, and Bill [Greaves] came walking down the aisle and said, ëThis
may or may not be part of the filmí" (23). Buscemi
would go on to star in 1995ís Living in Oblivion, the Tom DiCillo-directed
independent feature about independent filmmaking that shares with Symbio
its preoccupation with the multi-layeredness of reality and its self-deferential,
tongue-in-cheek humor (making it seem all the more impressive that Symbio
was made three decades earlier.) Buscemi has pledged his active support
to securing distribution for the film, accompanying Greaves to the Hamptons
festival screening and expressing interest in starring in and co-directing
a Symbio sequel. Such a high-profile spokesman for the filmís cause
is an invaluable asset, as is the infinitely greater access allowed African-American
independent filmmakers today (for which we are significantly indebted to
the early 1990ís renaissance in this area, led by independents Charles Burnett
and Julie Dash.) Also of great benefit is the recent success of The Blair
Witch Project, which in hitting the box-office jackpot opened the doors
for more experimental films like it.
Symbioís creation in 1968 qualifies it as one
of those rare works too brilliantly in advance of its contemporaries to
be understood in its own time. As Robert Stam notes, "The film is only
now being appreciated as the prophetic text that it is. Indeed, the film
virtually calls for a re-writing of the history of filmic reflexivity"
(24). With the benefit of postmodernist hindsight and
what J. Hoberman terms "the post-Warhol sense that life itself is a
movie", Symbio should finally be given its due. Hoberman goes
on to remark that Symbio "is a movie that enters American history
so decisively it seems like itís always been there" (25).
The news is that for the past thirty years, it has been there ñ and
still is, just waiting to be discovered.
© Maria San Filippo, January 2001
Endnotes:
- J.
Hoberman, "Itís Déjà-Vu All Over Again", Premiere, July 1992, p.33
- Adam
Knee & Charles Musser, "William Greaves, Documentary
Filmmaking and the African-American Experience", Film
Quarterly, 45.3, Spring 1992, pp.14-15
- Ibid.,
pp.15
- Scott
MacDonald, "Sunday in the Park with Bill", Independent
Film & Video Monthly, May 1992, p.24
- Quoted
in ibid., p.28
- Adam
Knee, "Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One: Film History
Revised", Sightlines, Fall 1992, p.11
- Scott
MacDonald, Screen Writings: Scripts & Texts by Independent
Filmmakers, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1995,
p.36
- Stephen
Mamber, Cinéma Vérité
in America: Studies in Uncontrolled Documentary, MIT Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1974, p.4
- Hoberman,
p.33
- Arthur
F. Bentley, Inquiry Into Inquiries: Essays in Social Theory,
Beacon Press, Boston, 1954, p.12
- MacDonald,
Screen Writing, p.47
- Robert
Stam, Reflexivity in Film & Literature: From Don Quixote
to Jean-Luc Godard, UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor, 1985, p.59
- MacDonald,
"Sunday in the Park with Bill", p.28
- Stam,
p.227
- Mamber,
pp.89-90
- Quoted
in MacDonald, Screen Writings, p.48
- Quoted
in MacDonald, "Sunday in the Park with Bill", p. 26
- Stam,
p.129
- Quoted
in John Anderson, "An Obscure Film that Wonít Die", New York Newsday, Oct. 8, 1997
- Quoted
in MacDonald, Screen Writings, p.34
- Quoted
in MacDonald, Screen Writings, pp.47-48
- Robert
Stam, Reflexivity in Film & Literature: From Don Quixote
to Jean-Luc Godard, rev. ed., Columbia University Press, New
York, 1992, first published 1985, p.xix
- Caryn
James, "Sound Bites from Sundance", New York Times,
Feb. 2, 1992
- Stam,
Reflexivity, rev. ed., p.xviii
- Hoberman,
p.33
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