Ben Van Meter
1941 - 2019The Saga of Macrame Park
Ben Van Meter
Alexandra Jackonetti
Alexandra Jackonetti recounts the building of a children's playground of macrame in Bolinas, Calif., including her conception of the project and the process of obtaining community financial support, knotting of macrame, and erection of the structure.
The Saga of Macrame Park
The Poon-Tang Trilogy
Ben Van Meter
The Poon Tang Trilogy (1964, B/W, sound) is a brief film composed of three 3-minute segments: in the first tableau, footage of the Hindenburg disaster is projected on the nude body of a young woman; in the second section, Civil Rights protesters are dragged away into police vans to the accompaniment of the '50s r&b hit "I Just Love Your Sexy Ways"; in the final portion of the film, another young woman attempts to remove a floating black bar which seeks to obliterate from the spectator's gaze various portions of her anatomy.
The Poon-Tang Trilogy
Boc Ging
Bob Comings, Ben Van Meter
Bob Comings
Created in 1968 by Robert Comings and Ben Van Meter in Bolinas, CA. Original sound & music performed on homemade acoustic instruments. Including a very funky clavichord with numerous drone strings, gongs were found pipes. Script is based on: "The Book I Always Reach For But Never Find" by Boc Ging. This film was created before any digital equipment was available to the general public. Some sections of the film were embellished with dyes by hand.
Boc Ging
For Life, Against the War
Betty Ferguson, Peggy Lawson
First shown on January 30, 1967, FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR was an open-call, collective statement from American independent filmmakers disparate in style and sensibility but united by their opposition to the Vietnam War. Part of the protest festival Week of the Angry Arts, the epic compilation film incorporated minute-long segments which were sent from many corners of the country, spliced together and projected. The original presentation of the works was more of an open forum with no curation or selection, and in 2000 Anthology Film Archives preserved a print featuring around 40 films from over 60 submissions.
For Life, Against the War
S.F. Trips Festival: An Opening
Ben Van Meter
Van Meter had three camera rolls of 7242 Ektachrome EFB, which he fully ran through his camera each day of the 3-day Trips Festival. The end result was three 100 ft. rolls of film that each had been triple exposed in-camera, each layer of exposure representing a day of the festival. Aside from just two or three necessary structural edits, Ben spliced the three rolls together essentially unedited. This was then set to a soundtrack that was achieved in roughly the same manner, via triple layering of sound he recorded throughout the festival; He calls the film “a documentary of the Trips Festival from the point of view of a goldfish in the punch bowl.”
S.F. Trips Festival: An Opening
Up Tight, L.A. Is Burning... Shit!
Ben Van Meter
One of the most powerful, thought-provoking collage films produced during the New American Cinema Movement. Almost schizophrenic in its kaleidoscopic barrage of images, this film dynamically conveys the bewilderment, frustration, annoyance, and anger of the modern generation in a stream-of-consciousness audio-visual onslaught of superimpositions. Produced by one of the leaders of the San Francisco New American Cinema Movement and a top producer of light shows.
Up Tight, L.A. Is Burning... Shit!
