Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
Synopsis
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.
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Awards & Festivals
National Society of Film Critics Awards
2006 | Winner: Experimental Film Award
National Film Preservation Board
2015 | Winner: National Film Registry
Probably the most entertaining daunting-sounding American movie of all time, William Greaves’s Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, shot in 1968, finished in 1971, shelved by its director until a Sundance premiere in 1993, and not given a proper theatrical release until 2001, never quite fit into any of its times.
Michael Koresky
July 18, 2018
In its destabilizing amalgamation of cinéma vérité and experimental narrative, Greaves’s movie remains one of the headiest about the filmmaking process.
Melissa Anderson
February 03, 2015
Greaves was up there with John Cassavetes and Shirley Clarke in the blend of sophisticated modernism and emotional fury, of self-implication and formal innovation, of self-revelation and revelation of the heart of the times. Greaves is even more extreme in his formal explorations; the only work of the era that’s comparable is Orson Welles’s “F for Fake,” from 1974.
Richard Brody
February 02, 2015
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