Screening
Peter Kass' "Time of the Heathen" + Ed Emshwiller's "Dance Chromatic"
Join us at the Film-Makers' Cooperative (475 Park Avenue South, 6th Floor) on Wednesday, October 9th, at 7pm, for a new 4K restoration of Peter Kass' TIME OF THE HEATEN (1961): a recently rediscovered "lost" masterpiece of the New American Cinema movement, featuring cinematography by groundbreaking experimental filmmaker and longtime FMC member Ed Emswhiller! Emshwiller's DANCE CHROMATIC (1957), which features some of the innovative filmmaking techniques (e.g. double exposures, hand-painting, direct animation) that would later appear in TIME OF THE HEATHEN, will also play in this program, which is co-presented by Arbelos Films.
Emerging from the void, mysterious drifter Gaunt (The Sting’s John Heffernan) wanders the upstate countryside in a daze with only his bible for company. But after happening upon the murder of a local female housekeeper at the hands of a rural deviant, Gaunt soon finds himself framed for the attack. Forced to flee deeper into the woods with the only witness to the crime –the woman’s young deaf mute son Jesse — the pair forge a complex bond that culminates in one of cinema’s mostmemorable, psychedelic, and unclassifiable endings.
A “lost” marvel of independent filmmaking, Time of the Heathen is set in the immediate shadow of the atomic bomb, yet narrativized through the groundbreaking aesthetics and shifting racial politics of the 1960s. Directed by Peter Kass, best known for his pathbreaking work in the New York theater world, and strikingly lensed by visual artist and avant garde filmmaker Ed Emshwiller, Heathen is major discovery for even the most well-versed cinephiles.
Restored in 4K in 2023 by UCLA Film & Television Archive and Lightbox Film Center, University of the Arts at Illuminate Hollywood laboratory, in collaboration with Corpus Fluxus and Audio Mechanics from the 35mm picture, the soundtrack negative and the original 1⁄4” stereo master recording of Lejaren Hiller’s score. Funding provided by Ron and Suzanne Naples.