Saul Levine
2021
New Left Note
Saul Levine
As editor of "New Left Notes", the newspaper of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Saul Levine was at the center of multiple radical political movements. Filming from 1968-1982, he employs a rapid fire editing style to create a frenetic, kaleidoscopic portrait of the antiwar movement, women's liberation and the Black Panthers.
New Left Note
Notes of an Early Fall
Saul Levine
Made in Binghamton in 1976 - a warped record constructed out of visits to the zoo, relatives and various locations. Appearances by obsessive birds, caged bears and hungry rams. "Certain shots are very evocative, such as a long shot of a group of people sitting on a park bench, one person playing a song on a recorder. The sound of the music, its fragility, is matched by the distance of the shot, lending a feeling of precariousness to the moment. There is a repeated shot of a warped record playing, with the same musical phrase endlessly repeated. The shot is an interior one, with the lighting casting a golden glow on the scene. The warped repetitions begin to reverberate with suggestions of frustrations." – Daryl Chin, The Soho Weekly News "His first talkie, NOTES OF AN EARLY FALL is a characteristically raw work that parlays even the sound of microphone rumble into a formal element.
Notes of an Early Fall
Note to Pati
Saul Levine
Something of an aesthetic convergence between the diaristic autobiographies and quotidian images of Jonas Mekas (as illustrated in his Diaries, Notes and Sketches chronicles) and the hand crafted dissonance and material violence of Stan Brakhage, “Note to Pati” presents a seemingly typical winter scene – the day after a snow storm as a suburban neighborhood digs out from under the accumulation and children make the most of an unexpected day off from school by playing in their winter wonderland. Saul Levine’s images are diffused, faded, and ephemeral, made all the more dissociating by Levine’s disorienting rapid cut editing, restless and twitching camerawork, and destabilized, quick pan sequences – an evocation of a transitory and wide-eyed innocence. —filmref.com
Note to Pati
Note to Erik
Saul Levine
"NOTES is a series I started in 1968. NOTE TO ERIK was the second one completed but the footage goes back to 1966 when I saw the footage I loved it but didn't feel ready to deal with it. Seeing Sharon Moss again who had moved to NYC from Storrs, CT inspired me to return to this footage to make a note to a mutual friend ERIK KIVIAT. It took about 2 years for me to feel I could respond to the generosity of her performance and the images I had gathered and shaped in my camera. Sharon Moss and her cats play and dance naked in the snow." - Saul
Note to Erik
Dead Day Window Display Note
Saul Levine
Every fall a store called NOMAD in Cambridge, on Mass Av,e puts up a window display of Mexican Day of the Dead pieces. My birthday is November, 3, so I am hyper aware of the death/resurrection fall celebration --. this is my sidewalk pedestrian note.
Dead Day Window Display Note
