Counter-Culture / Counter-Cinema: Saul Levine, Portraits & Politics

Saul Levine’s uncompromising cinematic visions of people and protest mark the coming together of counter-cultural aesthetics with radical politics. Known for dense, if not violent, editing, intensely embodied camerawork, and dedication to the intimacies of 8mm film, his more than five decades of fiercely independent filmmaking is that of a brilliant collagist, committed activist, and advocate for avant-garde film culture in Boston and beyond.

Though his political commitments are clearly of the Left (Levine was an editor for New Left Notes, the newspaper published by Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s), his films do not put forth a concrete political agenda, preferring instead to savor the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions of social existence. From portraits of friends and lovers to political demonstrations, Levine’s films are equally about the ways in which film and other forms of mediated vision, above all television, impact our daily lives. “Levine's grammar,” in the words of Marjorie Keller, “is set up to join media images without hiding the seams; media images of race and eroticism, love and violence, work and play, and presence and memory blend into a song of sorts of our time.” Rough hewn and cut-up, at once constructive and destructive, Levine’s cinematic politics are as urgent today as ever.

Programmed by David Fresko, FMC's Scholar-in-Residence.

PROGRAM:

The Big Stick, 1973. 16mm. Color. Silent. 12 min. 

Four Films, 1984. 16mm. Color. Silent. 10 min.

Unemployment, 1980. 16mm. Color. Silent. 6 min. 

New Left Note, 1982. 16mm. Color. Silent. 28 min.

PLUS!

Takahiko Iimura, Ai (Love). 1962. Black & White. Sound. 10 min.