Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One /Criterion Collection #360

Country: USA
Studio: Take One Productions
Genre: Documentary, Experimental
Year of manufacture: 1968
Duration: 01:15:20
Manufacturer: The Criterion Collection #360
Translation: Subtitles
Subtitles: English, Russian Abris
Original audio track: English
Premiere (world): 09/24/2004
Director: William Greaves
Screenplay: William Greaves Producer: William Greaves, Manuel Melamed, Manny Meland Cinematographer: Stephen Larner, Terrence McCartney Filgate
Composer: Miles Davis
Editing: William Greaves
Cast: Patricia Rhee Gilbert, Don Fellows, Jonathan Gordon, Robert L. Rosen, William Greaves, Susan Anspak, Audrey Heningham, Stephen Larner, Terrence McCartney Filgate, Maria Zeheri
Description: An experimental film by American independent director William Greaves, which explores the boundaries and relationships of those elements of cinema that are usually opposed: fiction and documentary, fiction and reality, control and spontaneity in the creative process.
This is a film about a large film crew filming a movie in Central Park. One film crew films a staged scene of a family quarrel, performed by different actors, another captures the process of this filming, the third documents the filming of the first two, as well as everything around - passers-by, mounted police, city crazy people.
Everything that happens during filming is in close interaction and affects the final result. Thus, the film opens up the possibilities of improvisation in cinema at all levels: in the director's concept, in acting, in the work of the film crew, in editing, and so on. And all this improvisation looks great with the music of Miles Davis, who created the soundtrack for the film. The openness and flexibility of the film and the director's vision reaches the point that at a certain point the entire crew comes together, separately from the director and actors, to discuss the film and delve into its essence and film it all on their own initiative so that it can be included in the film, although the director did not ask them to do this.
The result is a cinema that knows and creates itself, a mirror looking into a mirror.

Release type: DVD9 (Custom)
Container: DVD-Video
Video: NTSC 4:3 (720x480) VBR, 6850 Kbps, 23.976 fps
Audio: English: AC3, 1/0ch (Front:C), 48.0 KHz, 224 Kbps (Original)
Subtitle format: prerendered (DVD/IDX+SUB)