Acting Experiments on the Coasts in the 1960s and 1970s

Abstract

This chapter examines cultural and aesthetic traditions that would become central to subsequent independent film performances. The era’s vision of the body and performance as sites of political struggle would influence several threads of American independent cinema in the years to come. The chapter thus analyzes selected east coast films influenced by developments in punk music, performance art, hip-hop culture, and art cinema. It examines productions by west coast filmmakers working at UCLA in particular and Los Angeles in general, which was home to some of the earliest contributions by minority filmmakers. Inspired by the era’s focus on civil rights and social/cultural identity, UCLA fostered efforts for self-authored Indigenous productions; its students and faculty were successful in creating film/media productions by and for African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinx Americans. Los Angeles was also home to avant-garde artists whose work broke ground for independent women filmmakers and those who would later create New Queer Cinema. The chapter analyzes Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (Greaves, 1968), selected films by John Cassavetes, Killer of Sheep (Burnett, 1978), and Bush Mama (Gerima, 1979).