f o rewo rd
Neither/Nor is an annual screening series and pub- lication that provides an historical overview of films that explore and/or break free of the dubious dichot- omy of fact and fiction. To describe these forward- thinking works, we’ve adopted the word chimera.
Chimera is a mythological Greek figure composed of body parts from a lion, a goat, and a serpent. In the Iliad, Homer describes Chimera as a “great, swift- footed and strong” creature that breathes bright fire. In the years since Homer penned his epic, writers have used the word to define any creature formed from the distinct body parts of various animals.
Chimera perfectly suits the magical, unwieldy films Neither/Nor seeks to probe. This evocative word gets at the multifaceted nature of these alluring whatsits.
Beyond examining the films that laid the groundwork
for this era of inbetweenness, Neither/Nor also cel- ebrates the art of film scholarship. For our inaugural edition, we asked Eric Hynes, a gifted film critic whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, and Film Comment, to offer his insights on work produced in New York City during the late 1960s.
Over the course of several months, Eric took a com- prehensive look at the masterpieces and curios pro- duced during this wonderfully inventive era and then selected four chimeric films to represent the time period. With his essays and interviews, he’s given us a wealth of astute observations to consider.
It’s been a pleasure working with Eric, who has set a high bar for future editions of Neither/Nor. We look forward to building on his scholarship and, in the coming years, bringing you a wide range of inquiries into the history of chimeric cinema.
in troduction by eric hynes
Chimeras have existed since the advent of film, a form that has always simultaneously offered to record and represent, to capture and simulate life. But as film- maker Jim McBride says, “Something was in the air” in the mid-to-late 1960s, particularly in New York City, where the likes of McBride, William Greaves, and D.A. Pennebaker, as well as transients Peter Whitehead
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and Jean-Luc Godard, were making gloriously uncat- egorizable works of cinematic art. It was a moment when everything and everyone seemed to be riding, or even embracing, the edge of things, when films and politics and morality suddenly seemed unde- fined, up for grabs, subject to reinvention. With the Civil Rights era giving way to Black Power, Kennedy
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