Scorpio RisingMean Streets
Pop songs as a second script
Scorpio Rising scored its bikers with thirteen chart records, each commenting on the scene. Scorsese has credited that idea for the way he uses songs.
Underground film
The name the press gave American experimental film in the 1960s, when it moved into midnight screenings, court cases and the culture pages.
Underground film meant work made and shown outside the industry, often frank about sex and drugs and proud of its rough edges. Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising and Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures were among its most notorious titles. When police seized Flaming Creatures in New York in 1964, Jonas Mekas was arrested for showing it.
The word has outlived its decade. It now describes anyone working entirely on their own terms, like Giuseppe Andrews, shooting features with his neighbours in a Ventura trailer park.
Films to start with
In the order they were made. Runtimes are approximate.
Fireworks
Made when Anger was seventeen, while his parents were away. A young man's dream of sailors turns violent, then ecstatic, ending with a Roman candle.
Still from Flaming Creatures to come. Flaming Creatures
Drag performers, among them Mario Montez and Francis Francine, pose, dance and put on lipstick before an orgy and an earthquake shake the set. Police seized it at the New Bowery Theater in March 1964, and it was banned in New York State.
Scorpio Rising
Bikers polish chrome, dress in leather and ride, scored wall to wall with thirteen pop records, from Ricky Nelson to The Crystals, each one an ironic caption.
Still from Sins of the Fleshapoids to come. Sins of the Fleshapoids
Mike's film. In a far future where lazy humans leave all work to androids, the robot Xar kills his master and falls for the android Melenka, and the two produce a baby robot. Nobody speaks: the dialogue appears in big comic-strip speech balloons.
Trailer Town
Out-of-work comedians live in a trailer park, and one climbs onto his roof with a rifle after an eviction notice. Most of the cast were Andrews's neighbours. It premiered at the New York Underground Film Festival.
Where it led
Lines from these films into work you may already know.
Nearby
Movements, forms and techniques that share filmmakers or methods with this one.
New American Cinema
The New York independents who, from 1960, organised to make, distribute and show films outside Hollywood.
Trance film
Films where a dreamer drifts through a world that runs on the logic of sleep, and the camera follows them in.
Queer cinema
Films by and about queer people, made long before the industry would show their lives on screen, and often in defiance of it.
No-budget film
Features made with almost no money, often by one person, with friends, neighbours and whatever is at hand.