Movies: Ben Van Meter

The shadowing forth of Our Lord Lucifer, as the Power of Darkness gather at a midnight mass. The dance of the Magus widdershins around the Swirling Spiral Force, the solar swastika, until the Bringer of Light—Lucifer—breaks through....

Personal diary-style documentary of German Gay rights activist Von Praunheim's sojourn in the US....

Alexandra Jackonetti recounts the building of a children's playground of macrame in Bolinas, Calif., including her conception of the project and the process of obtaining community financial support, knotting of macrame, and erection of the structure....

First shown on January 30, 1967, FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR was an open-call, collective statement from American independent filmmakers disparate in style and sensibility but united by their opposition to the Vietnam War. Part of the protest festival W...

The Poon Tang Trilogy (1964, B/W, sound) is a brief film composed of three 3-minute segments: in the first tableau, footage of the Hindenburg disaster is projected on the nude body of a young woman; in the second section, Civil Rights protesters are ...

A color sound meditation on the erstwhile Warhol superstar....

First experimentation with in-camera multiple exposure as a technique of self-expression....

Make Love, Not War, or Brown Rice, uses three projectors, and takes advantage of all the possibilities. Similar images with different superimpositions combined with single images or different images, images which appear simultaneously or recur at dif...

A film exposing the staged commodification and banality of the American "beauty contest" with color overlays of fireworks in reverse-motion. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011....

Bay Area filmmakers and Canyon Cinema co-founders Ben Van Meter and Bruce Conner were invited to L.A. to talk about Underground Film on the Art Linkletter Show. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012....

The astrological signs of 12 young women....

Van Meter had three camera rolls of 7242 Ektachrome EFB, which he fully ran through his camera each day of the 3-day Trips Festival. The end result was three 100 ft. rolls of film that each had been triple exposed in-camera, each layer of exposure re...

A joyous, chaotic and colorful romp through nature; A psychedelic dance troupe rehearses in a studio....

This film follows a young man's adventures from his arrival in the big city, till he passes out in an apartment having been kidnapped and abandoned by 5 voluptuous hippie maidens....

A chicken farmer takes LSD....

Created in 1968 by Robert Comings and Ben Van Meter in Bolinas, CA. Original sound & music performed on homemade acoustic instruments. Including a very funky clavichord with numerous drone strings, gongs were found pipes. Script is based on: "The Boo...

Experimental documentary about the San Francisco scene....

(After or for Jean Vigo). A study in visual rhythms and structure, using the same basic element repeated with variations....

Hilariously terrifying satire of an interrogation session by the thought police....

Rathyahatra Festival San Francisco 1970....