Underground New York
New York Gershwin Hotel
Sunday 6 December 2009

In the 1960s, filmmakers investigated new forms of production in dialogue with radical shifts in art, music, performance and popular culture. Following the example of the Beats, the counterculture was alive with protest, freedom of expression and the breaking of taboos, and from the Film-Makers’ Coop to Andy Warhol’s Factory, portable 16mm cameras were bringing a whole new way of seeing to the cinema screen. These heady days of “underground film” were captured by Gideon Bachmann in a spirited broadcast for German television. Rarely seen today, it is one of the few surviving documents to show aspects of New York’s independent film culture during this exhilarating period.