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- [00:10]
A
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We continue our coverage of the Documentary Film festival, DOC nyc. Our selection today is the Film Museum of the Night. The film revisits the world of avant garde theater and cinema in the early 1970s, a time when New York City was rife with experimentation and creativity. We hear about it from someone who was there, Argentine artist Leandro Katz, who arrived in New York City in 1965. While living the city, he took part in the Theater of the Ridiculous, a group of eccentric performers connected to New York's queer underground scene between 1970 and 1976. He took photographs, assisted with lighting, developed films, some of which made it into the documentary. Museum of the Night is now screening online as part of DOC NYC Film Festival through Sunday, November 30th. Joining me now to discuss is the film's director, Firmin Eloy Acosta. Firmin, nice to meet you.
- [01:15]
B
Hi, nice to meet you, Alison.
- [01:17]
A
So you center the perspective of Leandro Katz, an Argentine artist who lived in the city for about 40 years. How did you come in contact with him?
- [01:26]
B
Well, I. Well, that's a nice question. I met him in 2014. He was having an art show in Buenos Aires. It was like a retrospective show, an art show in a very important gallery. And I got to see these amazing pictures, this photograph from the 60s and 70s, and there were also some films that were projected in a corner of this gallery. So. Well, I contacted him and we had a long interview, a long shot. I mean, we had a very nice meeting and, well, there's where I began to think about doing a film about this eccentric company. He was. Well, his memories and all of this stuff were so amazing that I wanted to do a film about that.
- [02:21]
A
What drew Leandro to New York City?
- [02:26]
B
You mean what. What told me about the city? What he told me about the city, yeah.
- [02:33]
A
Why did he come here? Why did he want to come to New York City?
- [02:36]
B
Oh, yes. Well, he went to New York city in the 60s. You know, it was a very important moment in which Latin American people, mostly from the Sauda, I think, went to New York. So he traveled around. I mean, he traveled all along Latin America. He went to Mexico, he went to El Salvador, he went to Brazil. I mean, he was very young, and he finished his long trip in the middle of the 60s in New York. So it was a very different city at that time. I know. So, yes. I don't know. He was just traveling and trying to find himself in that moment. I think it was easier to live without so much money. So. So, yes, I think he was an artist also. He was a poet at that moment, and he used to do some translations and he took photographs. So it was a very rich moment for art. And, well, he finished in New York.
- [03:40]
A
And he found the Theater of the Ridiculous. Tell us when you first heard of the Theater of the Ridiculous and how you would describe it to someone.
- [03:52]
B
Well, it's a very important and nice question because. Well, the first time I heard about the Theater of the Ridiculous was by Leandro himself. And I started to do a research. I mean, I talked to David Kaufman, which has written a very important book about the Theater of the Ridiculous that is called Ridiculous. And it's a biography of Charles Ladlan. Charles Ladolan was the. The alma mater of the company. He was the actor, the main actor. He designed all these characters. He also wrote all the. All the plays of the Theater of the Ridiculous. So I did a very important research. I got in contact also with Joey Jeffries, which is a very important scholar that has. That made some research about drug history in New York. I also went to the New York Public Library. In the performance part, there is the archive of Charles Lam. The alma mater of the group is there. And it's a very important archive. So I think that Leandro in the movie plays a central role in a way that he permits us to enter the Theater of the Ridiculous because he has a very important archive. I mean, he has a lot of photographs that are amazing. He has some films made, and he has also some interviews that he made in 2006, I think, that I used in my movie, that. I mean, he was trying to research the phenomenon and he interviews some important characters and, you know, people that were engaged with the theater at the precursor. I don't know if I'm answering your question.
- [05:47]
A
That's okay. We'll keep going. You know, throughout the film, you have these slides that outline the rules and the philosophy of the company. Would you share one or two of those rules so that people can understand what the Theater the Ridiculous was about?
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B
Okay, I think. Well, they had a manifesto, and that manifesto was related to their conception of art and the work of art and how it is. They will try to do some parody of the ideas of the masculine and the feminine roles and the idea of art and be. They were. They were working with these ideas of, for example, of Artau, the idea of the theater, of the cruelty. So they were also thinking about some moral issues. Also. You have to think that 60s and 70s was a period in which Sexuality was constrained, but it was also a moment in which there was also a lot of freedom I think they were pursuing. They were trying to. They were trying to create something that was related with that freedom. They took also ideas from Bertolt Brecht, which is. Which was very influential for Charles Ladlam, I mean, the son of Berto Brecht, who was an important. He was an actor also, but he also made reviews, theater reviews. And he was part of the company. He and his wife were part of the company. Marie Brecht used to design all the costumes for the company. So they were trying to think this avant garde theater. I don't know. They were trying to make a statement about sexuality, about the idea of humanity also. So, yeah, I think that the manifesto related with that idea of the ridiculous.
- [08:05]
A
We are continuing our coverage of Doc NYC with a film about the world of avant garde theater and Cinema in early 1970s New York City. We're speaking with the director of Museum of the Night, Fermin Eloy Acosta. There's this really cool, interesting part of the film where we see New York and everything is. Is very sped up. It's speeded up very. All the time. Tell us about your decision to put that in the film without necessarily anybody explaining it, but it tells part of the story.
- [08:43]
B
Okay. Those images of New York were images taken from a. From a very important work of Leandro that is called Metropotamia. It was some kind of an installation. It was taken from that. These speed up images were already so fast. I mean, those images are some kind of a time lapse of New York in the 70s. And you get to feel the spirit of that era. I wanted to think about the synchronization of these images within the movie. I think it's a movie that works with different kind of speeds and intensities. So. But what we did with that image is worth. We designed all the soundtrack, all the sound that you got to hear. I mean, those images were mute and silent. So we did a very strong work researching how this, how the city sounded at that era. And we imagine how the song could be to that image. So I wanted to think about different times collapsing during the whole movie. So we were thinking about the 60s, but those images are from the 70s and the 80s. And also the movie mixes analogic images and digital images. And I got to film in 60 millimeters, so it's like a mixture. I like to think that the movie is like a collage. So those images are part of thinking about time. I really like to think about Time, Because I don't know, cinema is, you know, about time itself. Narrative. It's about time. So I was trying to think about this ghost of the company of the theater, of the ridiculous emerging in that images. So you get to hear some weird sounds while you travel in the city.
- [10:50]
A
What do you see as sort of the continuity between these avant garde theater experiences which we see in your film and what artists are doing today?
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B
Well, it's. Well, it's a difficult question because I don't know if there is an important connection between these two scenes. I think that now we are constrained to different problems. I mean, I think in that era, everything was about freedom. Everything was about inventing new languages. Everything was about, I don't know, Charles and the company, for example, use nudity as a costume, you know, and now we are seeing nudity everywhere. So I think it's. Now it's more difficult to invent, to imagine new devices to defy. I mean, to. Yes, to imagine other ways to find freedom. I mean, it's quite difficult today because we are so. We are in a moment in which these kind of things. I don't know if that work at the same level. I don't know if that answered your question. But I think they have more freedom in a way that they were creating out of nothing.
- [12:23]
A
The name of the film is Museum of the Night. It is filming as part of a screening as part of DOC nyc. You can watch it online. I've been speaking, speaking with this director for Min, Eloy Acosta. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate your time.
- [12:39]
B
Thank you. Thank you very much. Alison.