Triptych in Four Parts, Lawrence Jordan, 1957, 12’
One of the few authentically “Beat” films, produced within the North Beach, San Francisco counterculture of the time. It features artists Wallace Berman and his family, poets Michael McClure and Phillip Lamantia, artist John Reed and peyote farmers in South Texas. The film begins with a portrait of John Reed in North Beach, continues with the search for (and discovery of) sacred peyote grounds, then returns to the Berman home in San Francisco. The film is a spiritual drug odyssey in search of a religious epiphany, something many people believed in at the time.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, John Huston, 1948, 126’
In 1925, two American adventurers, Dobbs and Curtin, meet in the main square of Tampico, Mexico. They go searching for gold in the company of an old prospector named Howard, who, despite the trouble he senses, agrees to join the expedition. Surprisingly, the old prospector proves to be made of strong stuff, and above all, knows how to find gold in the very inaccessible Sierra Madre.