Documenting avant-garde performances required physically intrusive underground filming techniques

Evidence

By his own account, Mekas used three direct-sound Auricon cameras with ten-minute film magazines and, saddled with eighty pounds of equipment, shot the play in a dozen extended takes inside the Cage, weaving around the actors: “Constantly stepping in their way, disrupting their usual movements … I was a circus man on a tightrope high in the air.” In fact, he was being steered by Judith Malina and needed to keep clear of Storm de Hirsch, who was busy filming a newsreel, Jonas in the Brig. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 502

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Bottomless access to street life made avant-garde films possible — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York…, 474; Underground filmmaking pushed improvisation to its absolute outer limits — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York…, 424; Colonoscopy cinematography consolidates immediacy as an intensified video style — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 190 (+1 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Bottomless access to street life made avant-garde films possible — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York…, 474; Underground filmmaking pushed improvisation to its absolute outer limits — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York…, 424; Colonoscopy cinematography consolidates immediacy as an intensified video style — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 190 (+1 more)