A censored avant-garde film found defenders in the alternative press and a church venue.

Evidence

New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther took the bait, attacking The Connection as “a forthright and repulsive observation of a sleazy, snarling group of narcotic addicts.” The Village Voice rose to the movie’s defense with a Jonas Mekas jeremiad titled “Open Letter to the New York Daily Movie Critics,” whom he accused of butchering what might be the year’s best American film. The next week’s Voice ran a page-one story advising readers that Reverend Howard Moody was challenging the ban with two screenings at the Judson Church. (That these occurred on October 19, three days from the height of the escalating Cuban Missile Crisis, doubtless accentuated Mekas’s sense of The Connection as a study in nameless, existential dread.) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 403

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to reader’s argument about how marginalized art scenes depend on institutional loopholes (churches as screening venues) — parallel to cheap-rent conditions.