The state convicted underground filmmakers under distinct obscenity and licensing statutes in mid-1964.

Evidence

On Monday, June 8, Ken Jacobs and Alan Marlowe were found guilty of “exhibiting an unlicensed film in a place of amusement for pay,” a first under this New York State statute. Friday, Jacobs and Mekas were convicted of showing an obscene film. Mekas’s trial for exhibiting Un chant d’amour was scheduled for the following week, by which time the Flaming Creatures case was upstaged by People of the State of New York vs. Lenny Bruce, which ran through July in the same Criminal Courts Building. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 524

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s shelf claims about the legal/regulatory conditions that shaped cultural production; also parallels the censorship cases in the library’s book on artistic freedom struggles.