Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One + The Death Waltz

In his wildly innovative sixties counterculture landmark, the pioneering William Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York’s Central Park.

Overlooked on its release, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One is now considered an iconic work and has been championed by Steve Buscemi and Steven Soderbergh. A couple enacts a breakup scenario over and over, a documentary crew films a crew filming the crew, locals wander casually into the frame: the project defies easy description. Yet this wildly innovative sixties counterculture landmark remains one of the most tightly focused and insightful movies ever made about making movies, Screening as part of the Stuart Croft season with the artist’s short film The Death Waltz in which a guest at a dinner party recites an endless, gothic ghost story.

"William Greaves's fiction-nonfiction hybrid playfully takes itself apart scene by scene, code by code, in a bid to reveal how cinematic illusions are manufactured." - Manohla Dargis, New York Times