Audiences rioted at screenings of static minimalist films

Evidence

Next, Mekas scheduled The Legendary Harry Smith as a benefit for the filmmaker at the City Hall Cinema, a 576-seat house in the no-longer extant New York Tribune Building at 170 Nassau Street. Just down from the approach to the Brooklyn Bridge, the theater had been recommended to Mekas by Ken Jacobs. Empire had had its scandalous premiere there seven weeks before. Ten minutes into that projection, Mekas would report, “a crowd of thirty or forty people stormed out of the theatre into the lobby, surrounded the box office, [theater manager?] Bob Brown, and myself, and threatened to beat us up and destroy the theatre unless their money was returned. ‘This is not entertainment! This movie doesn’t move,’ shouted the mob.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 691

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the received-audience reactions to atonal music and abstract painting — the gap between avant-garde intent and audience expectation as a measured, physical effect.