Brand X
Screening on Film
$12 Special Event Tickets
With Taylor Mead, Sally Kirkland, Tally Brown, Frank Cavestani.
US, 1970, 16mm, color, 87 min.
Introduction by Sam Chamberlain, son of director Wynn Chamberlain.
After a snowbound weekend in 1969 spent watching television, painter Wynn Chamberlain was inspired to make his first film, a series of skits spoofing the politics and mass media of the day and presented as a string of faux TV shows, complete with commercials. (His previous attempt at filmmaking was preempted when houseguest Andy Warhol commandeered Chamberlain's cache of 16mm film to make Sleep.) The result is sketch comedy of, by and for the counterculture, starring a wondrous and eclectic array of famous personalities, including Ultra Violet, Abbie Hoffman, Sally Kirkland and Sam Shepard. Taylor Mead pops up frequently as a string of delightfully bizarre characters, including a fitness guru, a televangelist and the President of the United States. Aptly described by Jonas Mekas as "propaganda for the politics of joy and disorder," this remarkably prescient satire was unavailable for years after its initial success, until the sole surviving print surfaced quite recently and was recovered by Chamberlain. – DP