Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One & Take 2 1/2

Running time: 170 mins

Cinequest is proud to offer a showing of both the legendary Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, a remarkable study of the possibilities of cinema first shown in 1968, with its 2005 companion piece, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2½.

In Take One of William Greaves? self-reflexive opus, the director plays himself with a camera crew following a couple of actors around New York City?s Central Park. When it starts to look like a drama about making a movie, however, the film throws viewers a curveball and turns into the story about its own making. Or does it? Where does the movie end and reality begin? By using teasing cinematic methods similar to Medium Cool, Greaves molds his footage into a fascinating experiment about the multiple levels which become engaged when a camera records the world around us.

Presented by Steven Soderbergh (Traffic), Take 2½ picks up with Greaves nearly four decades following his daring film, with the same multilayered ruminations. The crew meets again in the same locations with the same techniques to continue the shooting, once again following a couple?s relationship across the park. The medium itself is playfully examined in its filming, scoring and editing levels, creating a profound mix of the rehearsed and the improvised, the composed and the accidental, as well as a moving, wistful commentary on the experimentation vogue of the late 1960s.

Funny, stimulating and intensely entertaining, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is a treasure finally getting the wide attention it deserves.

Fernando F. Croce

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