Licensing pressure from the city reshaped avant-garde film’s public events

Evidence

December 7, moments before the ceremonial midnight screening was to begin, the Tivoli management buckled under the pressure from New York City’s Bureau of Licenses and canceled the show. Outraged, Mekas gave Smith his award outside, using the roofs of the cars parked along Eighth Avenue as his stage. Then a few hundred New American Cinema partisans led by Barbara Rubin occupied the Tivoli until evacuated by the police. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 490

Categorization

• XREF: State censorship as a spur to scene solidarity — connects to claims elsewhere about illegality as a condition enabling subculture density.