Willard Maas Movies
- 1968
Willard Maas' Orgia is a filmed orgy that was originally designed as part of a longer film which had St. Teresa of Avila as its subject; this was the only part of Maas' script that was completed. Willard Maas plays the devil, and hands out masks to the audience, who put them on and act out a huge orgy in the living room. In the bathroom, a "fantastic drag queen" holds court. Orgia was made around 1964, but it wasn't completed or shown until 1968. At the time that it opened, filmmaker and critic Jonas Mekas wrote in The Village Voice that "Maas wears a laughing clown mask. At one moment he takes it off...and if there ever was a sad face, it is the face that comes out from under this laughing mask in Orgia." Indeed, Orgia was the final instance in which Willard Maas attempted to apply himself to the poetic film genre he'd helped create, and its failure to get beyond this 12-minute fragment proved devastating to him. Mekas, however, saw something different in it: "It is a complete thing as it is. The only other film that comes to mind that has the same feeling and power is Limelight." ~ David Lewis, Rovi
- Starring:
- Willard Maas
- 1966
Described by filmmaker Willard Maas as "a hilarious satire on the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Everything is there but the soup, but it's nuts for sure." Departing from his usual modus operandi as a poetically inclined avant-grade filmmaker, Maas made this as a black comedy, and according to him it played particularly well "in Texas, the Midwest and the South." Jonas Mekas in The Village Voice called Excited Turkeys "a masterpiece," whereas, in the same publication, critic James Stoller referred to it as "obscene." ~ David Lewis, Rovi
- Starring:
- Nancy Holiday, Micki McCoy, (more)
- 1964
Willard Maas' best known, or at least most frequently seen, film is a short semi-documentary depicting Andy Warhol's inflatable silver pillows floating around a room located in the Castelli Gallery. ~ David Lewis, Rovi
- 1961
Bagatelle for Willard Maas was filmed in Versailles and at the Louvre in Paris. It focuses mainly on the public fountains in these locations. The date 1961 signifies the year Teiji Ito's soundtrack was added to the film, but the film itself may have been shot several years earlier. ~ David Lewis, Rovi
- Starring:
- Willard Maas
- 1961
Filmed at the Alhambra in Spain in just one day, according to Marie Menken. Arabesque for Kenneth Anger concentrates on visual details found in Moorish architecture and in ancient Spanish tile. The date 1961 refers to the addition of Teiji Ito's soundtrack and its subsequent completion, but the film was likely shot in 1960 or earlier. ~ David Lewis, Rovi
- Starring:
- Kenneth Anger, Willard Maas, (more)
- 1956
As described by P. Adams Sitney, Narcissus (Ben Moore) "wanders in desolation through an outdoor corridor formed by two rows of busts of the Roman emperors." Narcissus finds his reflection in a pool, and later in a series of three mirrors which reflect the two different aspects of his sexual identity and "love that insures one a place in the present and history," according to director Willard Maas. Narcissus was Willard Maas' most ambitious project, and probably the first feature-length underground film made in the United States to be shown to the public -- the premiere was held at a special screening in New York in 1955. Narcissus represents direct evidence of the influence of Jean Cocteau's film The Blood of a Poet among early underground filmmakers. It was given an "Award of Distinction" by the Creative Film Foundation. ~ David Lewis, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ben Moore
- 1953
Filmed in Brooklyn, Image in the Snow is an early underground "trance film" in which "a young man led by despair searches a city for salvation" (director Willard Maas' own description). He takes the Myrtle Ave. el and finds his "ideal parents" represented as carved stone figures on a tomb in the old part of Mt. Olivet Cemetary. Although not as highly regarded as Geography of the Body or as ostentatious as Narcissus in its own time, Image in the Snow has become the most frequently revived of Willard Maas' thematic, non-documentary films. At a 1953 symposium on "Poetry and Film" Maya Deren praised Image in the Snow, stating that "the development of the film is very largely horizontal, that is, there is a story line, but this is illuminated constantly by poetic commentary so that you have two actions going on simultaneously." In the 21st century Image in the Snow is largely viewed in the gay community as a key example of what gay life was like "in the bad old days." ~ David Lewis, Rovi
- 1943
Extreme close-ups of nude male and female bodies, taken through a magnifying glass bought at a dime store, are combined with a surrealist text written and read by poet George Barker. The poem, in Barker's deadpan reading, comments humorously on the body parts, which are photographed in such tiny detail that they appear as landscapes. Geography of the Body was the first widely distributed underground art film, and was a regular fixture of the campus art film circuit for years. Although by the year 2000 it appears as a relatively quaint antique (and is in serious need of preservation assistance), Geography of the Body was easily as influential in its day as Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid's Meshes of the Afternoon, made the same year. ~ David Lewis, Rovi
- Starring:
- George Barker, Willard Maas, (more)
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