A Federal grant subsidized the downtown filmmakers’ infrastructure that incubated the avant-garde

Evidence

Funded by a Federal grant funneled through the New School for Social Research and administered by the St. Mark’s Church, the Millennium opened during the summer of 1966, offering open screenings at the church, as well as classes and editing facilities at the old Second Avenue courthouse. Conflict with his assistant director, the more commercially minded filmmaker Stanton Kaye, led to Jacobs’s ouster after six months. The story got page-one coverage in the Voice. The grant was terminated. Jacobs was briefly able to keep the project afloat on his own with help from Jonas Mekas. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1978

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence against the lone-genius myth: the scene ran on Federal grant money funneled through a church — material conditions, not genius, produced the invention density.
• SEED: The fact that a Federal NEA-style grant via a church incubated the downtown avant-garde is a clean counterexample for anyone claiming government funding kills edge culture.