A single open screening venue incubated multiple future film careers

Evidence

Among the unknown filmmakers who attended and exhibited short works at the Charles were Brian De Palma, Ken Jacobs, Paul Morrissey, and Jack Smith, who, years later, remembered the Charles screening as “wide open. People brought in their own films and saw them on the huge Charles screen—a truly surrealistic experience … and they looked damn good.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1885

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence for the reader’s thesis: cheap, open venues (the Charles) are where density of invention comes from — supports the material-conditions argument.