Adolfas Mekas made his mark in American independent filmmaking with this avant-garde comedy that shook up film festivals circa 1963. Although it is said to have inspired Andy Warhol, it’s its own animal entirely, eighty minutes of cinematic frivolity that’s too sincere to be a parody of the filmic conventions it so happily celebrates.
Hallelujah the Hills
Blu-ray
Kino Classics
1963 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 82 min. / Street Date October 30, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Peter Beard, Sheila Finn, Martin Greenbaum, Peggy Steffans, Jerome Raphael, Blanche Dee, Jerome Hill, Taylor Mead, Ed Emshwiller.
Cinematography: Ed Emshwiller
Film Editor: Louis Brigante, Adolfas Mekas
Costumes: Bathsheba
Original Music: Meyer Kupferman
Produced by David C. Stone
Written and Directed by Adolfas Mekas
Trying to describe Adolfas Mekas’ Hallelujah the Hills is a real chore. It is avant-garde in a way that no longer seems all that ‘avant,’ yet its impact in 1963 was very strongly felt in independent filmmaking everywhere.
Hallelujah the Hills
Blu-ray
Kino Classics
1963 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 82 min. / Street Date October 30, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Peter Beard, Sheila Finn, Martin Greenbaum, Peggy Steffans, Jerome Raphael, Blanche Dee, Jerome Hill, Taylor Mead, Ed Emshwiller.
Cinematography: Ed Emshwiller
Film Editor: Louis Brigante, Adolfas Mekas
Costumes: Bathsheba
Original Music: Meyer Kupferman
Produced by David C. Stone
Written and Directed by Adolfas Mekas
Trying to describe Adolfas Mekas’ Hallelujah the Hills is a real chore. It is avant-garde in a way that no longer seems all that ‘avant,’ yet its impact in 1963 was very strongly felt in independent filmmaking everywhere.
- 12/1/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
by Vadim Rizov
[Presented by Milestone Films, The Connection opens today at NYC's IFC Center in a new 35mm restoration.]
Though credulous French viewers allegedly mistook it for vérité footage at Cannes, Shirley Clarke's 1962 drama The Connection is unmistakably a filmed play. A camera swoop through a ratty New York apartment halts for a sweaty, self-and-everyone-loathing monologue from waspy addict Leach (Warren Finnerty), fuming about his "so-called friends" and their junkie worthlessness. Far from naturalism, this is Eugene O'Neill territory, with a drug connection subbing for the long-awaited iceman in a purgatorial living room. Leach finds his place under a big sign posted above the bathroom for maximum dark comic value ("Heaven or hell...which will you choose?"), holding forth with barroom intensity and pointlessness about the speed of light and the body's transparency.
Clarke meticulously records Finnerty's theatrical version of verisimilitude. More of-the-time hamminess comes from Solly (Jerome Raphael), a middle-aged intellectual with a penchant for philosophizing at the slightest provocation. Leach's problem is his...
[Presented by Milestone Films, The Connection opens today at NYC's IFC Center in a new 35mm restoration.]
Though credulous French viewers allegedly mistook it for vérité footage at Cannes, Shirley Clarke's 1962 drama The Connection is unmistakably a filmed play. A camera swoop through a ratty New York apartment halts for a sweaty, self-and-everyone-loathing monologue from waspy addict Leach (Warren Finnerty), fuming about his "so-called friends" and their junkie worthlessness. Far from naturalism, this is Eugene O'Neill territory, with a drug connection subbing for the long-awaited iceman in a purgatorial living room. Leach finds his place under a big sign posted above the bathroom for maximum dark comic value ("Heaven or hell...which will you choose?"), holding forth with barroom intensity and pointlessness about the speed of light and the body's transparency.
Clarke meticulously records Finnerty's theatrical version of verisimilitude. More of-the-time hamminess comes from Solly (Jerome Raphael), a middle-aged intellectual with a penchant for philosophizing at the slightest provocation. Leach's problem is his...
- 5/4/2012
- GreenCine Daily
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