| Twice a Man | |
|---|---|
 Publicity still from a 1963 advertisement | |
| Directed by | Gregory Markopoulos |
| Produced by | Gregory Markopoulos |
| Cinematography | Gregory Markopoulos |
| Edited by | Gregory Markopoulos |
| Distributed by | The Film-Makers' Cooperative |
Release date |
|
Running time | 49 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Twice a Man is a 1963 American avant-garde film directed by Gregory Markopoulos.
The film opens with a black screen and the sound of rain. Paul stands at the edge of a roof, considering suicide, until the artist-physician places his hand on Paul's shoulder. Paul takes the ferry across the New York Harbor and visits his mother. [1]
At his mother's house, memories and dreams of Paul, the artist-physician, and Paul's mother as a young and old woman are shown. In the film's ending, Paul collapses while dancing, and the artist-physician goes to kiss him, their faces merging in superimposition. Once the artist-physician moves away, the image of Paul cracks as if a broken mirror, and a white screen remains. [2]
Markopoulos's casting of Olympia Dukakis marked her first screen role. [3] He shot the film in New York in March 1963, using a camera from Charles Levine. [4] [5] Markopoulos originally planned to include sync sound in Twice a Man but revised this several times while making the film. He prepared a script where dialogue was related to the images but not synchronized. He decided to instead use voice-over for a few of the characters before paring this down to voice-over for the mother only. His revised script reduced the dialogue to words and phrases that could be arranged as needed in the soundtrack. [6] [7] Markopoulos edited the scenes in order, with a highly intricate style in which shots may be broken up by sudden, rapid bursts of images. [8] [9]
Twice a Man is a modern retelling of the Greek myth of Hippolytus. [10] Paul's ferry ride is symbolic of crossing the River Styx. Events at the house make reference to the offering of a lock of hair, the incestuous relation with Phaedra, and the heavenly rebirth. [11] Critic P. Adams Sitney characterizes Twice a Man as a mythopoeic film, connecting it to other contemporary works in American experimental cinema— Dog Star Man , Scorpio Rising , and Heaven and Earth Magic —with a similar interest in myth-making. [12]
A silent version of Twice a Man screened at the Gramercy Arts Theatre on June 15, 1963, as part of a fundraiser organized by the Film-Makers' Cooperative to finish the film. [4] Jonas Mekas documented the premiere in several shots of his film Lost, Lost, Lost. [13] Twice a Man was first shown with its completed soundtrack on October 4, 1963. [4]
Markopoulos submitted the film to the third Knokke-Le-Zoute Experimental Film Festival in Belgium, where it won a $2,000 prize. [14] Because of an incident at the festival where Flaming Creatures could not be screened, Mekas floated the idea of prize recipients refusing their awards; however, Markopoulos decided to accept it. [15]
In 1967, Markopoulos made a double projection of the film called Twice a Man Twice, in which one copy of the original film is played forward and the other in reverse. [16] He included segments from Twice a Man in cycles 4, 8, 15, and 19 of his final project Eniaios . [17] A re-edited version of Twice a Man was screened at the 1997 New York Film Festival. [18]
Jonas Mekas praised the film in his column for The Village Voice , calling it "the most important and most beautiful film to open in New York this year". [19] Critic Fred Camper credited it as "the film that got me interested in cinema." [3]
Ron Rice's The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man includes a parody of Twice a Man. His rough cut of the film, which was unfinished when he died in 1963, ends on the ferry where Twice a Man begins. [20] Director Werner Schroeter cited the film's "curiously slow, long-drawn-out sequences and frankly gay images of men" as an influence on his 1969 film Eika Katappa . [21] The film is now part of Anthology Film Archives' Essential Cinema Repertory collection. [22]
An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre or financing.
Scorpio Rising is a 1963 American experimental short film shot, edited, co-written and directed by Kenneth Anger, and starring Bruce Byron as Scorpio. Loosely structured around a prominent soundtrack of 1960s pop music, it follows a group of bikers preparing for a night out.
Adolfas Mekas was a Lithuanian-born American filmmaker, writer, director, editor, actor and educator. With his brother Jonas Mekas, he founded the magazine Film Culture, as well as the Film-Makers' Cooperative and was associated with George Maciunas and the Fluxus art movement at its beginning. He made several short films, culminating in the feature Hallelujah the Hills in 1963, which was played at the Cannes Film Festival of that year and is now considered a classic of American film.
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources.
Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema. The film archive and theater is located at 32 Second Avenue on the southeast corner of East 2nd Street, in a New York City historic district in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan.
Wavelength is a 1967 experimental film by Canadian artist Michael Snow. Considered a landmark of avant-garde cinema, it was filmed over one week in December 1966 and edited in 1967, and is an example of what film theorist P. Adams Sitney describes as "structural film", calling Snow "the dean of structural filmmakers."
Flaming Creatures is a 1963 American experimental film directed by Jack Smith. The film follows an ensemble of drag performers through several disconnected vignettes, including a lipstick commercial, an orgy, and an earthquake. It was shot on a rooftop on the Lower East Side on a very low budget of only $300, with a soundtrack from Smith's roommate Tony Conrad. It premiered April 29, 1963 at the Bleecker Street Cinema in Greenwich Village.
Gregory J. Markopoulos was a Greek-American experimental filmmaker.
P. Adams Sitney, is a historian of American avant-garde cinema. He is known as the author of Visionary Film, one of the first books on the history of experimental film in the United States.
The Flicker is a 1966 American experimental film by Tony Conrad. The film consists of only 5 different frames: a warning frame, two title frames, a black frame, and a white frame. It changes the rate at which it switches between black and white frames to produce stroboscopic effects.
Cosmic Ray is a 1962 American experimental short film directed by Bruce Conner. With both found footage and original material, it features images of countdown leader, a nude woman dancing, a Mickey Mouse cartoon, and military exercises. It is soundtracked by a performance of Ray Charles's "What'd I Say" and has been recognized by some critics as one of the first music videos.
Storm de Hirsch (1912–2000) was an American poet and filmmaker. She was a key figure in the New York avant-garde film scene of the 1960s, and one of the founding members of the Film-Makers' Cooperative. Although often overlooked by historians, in recent years she has been recognized as a pioneer of underground cinema.
Robert Carlton Breer was an American experimental filmmaker, painter, and sculptor.
Barbara Rubin (1945–1980) was an American filmmaker and performance artist. She is best known for her landmark 1963 underground film Christmas on Earth.
Jerry Jofen (1925–1993) was an American painter, collagist, and experimental filmmaker.
Anticipation of the Night is a 1958 American avant-garde film directed by Stan Brakhage. It was a breakthrough in the development of the lyrical style Brakhage used in his later films.
Adebar is a 1957 Austrian avant-garde short film directed by Peter Kubelka. It is the first entry in Kubelka's trilogy of metrical films, followed by Schwechater and Arnulf Rainer. Adebar is the first film to be edited entirely according to a mathematical rhythmic strategy.
The Way to Shadow Garden is a 1955 American experimental film directed by Stan Brakhage.
Blue Moses is a 1962 American experimental film directed by Stan Brakhage, starring Robert Benson.
The Illiac Passion is a 1968 American avant-garde film directed by Gregory Markopoulos.
