Skip to Content
Poster for Symbiopsyschotaxiplasm

Symbiopsyschotaxiplasm

Director: William Greaves Run Time: 100 min. Format: 35mm Rating: NR Release Year: 1969

Starring: Don Fellows, Jonathan Gordon, Patricia Ree Gilbert, Robert L. Rosen

Part of the Northside Film Festival, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is a 1968 experimental docu-drama film written, directed, and conceived by African-American film director and documentarian William Greaves. Playing before Symbiopsychotaximplasm: Take One is the BFC Short film, Leal.

In his one-of-a-kind fiction/documentary hybrid Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One, director William Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York’s Central Park, leaving them to try to figure out what kind of movie they’re making. A couple enacts a break-up 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. – Criterion Collection