
It's been a whirlwind for a couple of days for films in NYC. Midas Man, a British biopic about the late great gay Beatles impresario Brian Epstein, opened the New York Jewish Film Festival mid-week at the Walter Reade Theater (excellent cast with brilliant Jacob Fortune-Loyd in the title role, plus Eddie Marsan and Emily Watson as Epstein's parents); also that night, a preview of Steven Soderbergh's new supernatural thriller Presence at the AMC on 71st and Broadway featuring Lucy Liu and Julia Fox; and on Fri. Jan. 17th 2024, two films considered lost for many years by Andy Warhol associate the artist and filmmaker NAOMI LEVINE at Anthology Film Archives on the Lower East Side.
One of the earliest scene makers in the Warhol Factory retinue, and by all accounts a very charismatic presence as well as a cultural catalyst (she introduced her good friend Jonas Mekas to the films of Warhol, who Jonas began regularly championing in his column in the Village Voice), Naomi Levine was a striking actress who can be glimpsed in many early underground films of the early '60s by Jack Smith and Andy Warhol (you could do worse than investigate her appearance in Andy's 1964 Batman/Dracula and his 1963 Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort Of, starring Dennis Hopper, Claes Oldenburg, and Taylor Mead). Naomi Levine eventually fell out with Andy and the Factory scene. The story from one Factory insider is that Naomi Levine claimed Andy's 1964 silk-screened Flower Series was inspired by Naomi's 1963 film Yes. She confronted Andy and demanded a silk-screened Flower print in lieu of acknowledgement or payment, he refused, and she left the Factory for good to concentrate on her own filmmaking.
She went on to make about 10 short films, most of which are unfortunately considered lost, and later abandoned filmmaking to concentrate on painting. Too bad, as by all available evidence, she was a very original and distinctive filmmaker. At one time, her films were shown at MOMA, and she was hailed at the Philadelphia Film Festival as "a seminal figure in the now historic movement of the New American film." She died in 2007 in more or less obscurity, so thank God for Anthology for reviving and preserving her work. She apparently, at one time, tried to destroy her own work, but Jonas managed to preserve two 16mm prints, which have recently been transferred and now exist in celluloid safety copies and also digitally.
(Naomi Levine can be glimpsed as the striking brunette near the end of this clip from Andy Warhol and Jack Smith's 1964 Batman/Dracula.)
The two known extant Naomi Levine films shown last night in their new restorations, 1963's Yes and 1964's Jeremelu, were arresting studies in black and white and featured brief glimpses of many of the NYC avant-garde movers and shakers of the early '60s. Yes boasts stunning black and white shots of forest flowers, which clearly presage Andy's "Flowers" silk-screen series, and Jeremelu, a vibrant black and white montage with discontinuous editing and supra-energy.
This particular Naomi Levine program was a first of sorts for Anthology. Because the 16mm Warhol films are currently out of circulation by their distributor (why??), these relatively short dream-like film exercises by Naomi Levine were on a bill topped off with Anthology founder Jonas Mekas's Reel 3 of his 1968 magnum opus Walden.
I love Jonas's own films and have only seen fragments of Walden over the years. I have to say that Reel 3 of Walden was stunning in every way—a full-on hypnotic retinal assault of swirling, pixilated super-saturated color and black and white footage of the city of New York and rural environs, which included a soundtrack with uncredited contributions by John Cale (sped up in parts and further fragmented by Jonas), and needle drops from classical music albums and local radio stations.
I'd love to see more work by Naomi Levine—for one brief, exciting moment in time, an explosive avant-garde filmmaker—later, a largely forgotten, largely unsung member of Warhol's early Factory entourage.
Naomi Levine's work deserves a lot better than that. And this exciting restoration of two of her early films by Anthology Film Archives should hopefully get the ball rolling in the right direction.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The photo above shows NAOMI LEVINE in her hey-day sitting in the front row of the Pocket Theatre NYC at 100 3rd Ave. with Warhol associate and poet Gerard Malanga during a performance of the infamous PIANO MARATHON, which took place on Sept. 9-10th 1963, and consisted of a slew of pianists including John Cale and John Cage performing Érik Satie's short piano piece "Vexations" 840 times over 19 hours without a break. Also in the photo: La Monte Young and Marion Zaeela.