
SYNOPSIS
Cinema verite reaches a new level of reality in this film-within-a-film as director William Greaves dares to break the accepted rules of cinema. It is 1968 and Greaves and his crew are in New York’s Central Park ostensibly filming a screen test. The drama involves a bitter break up between a married couple. But this is just the “cover story.” The real story is happening “off” camera as the enigmatic director pursues his hidden agenda. The growing conflict and chaos -- accompanied by moments of uproarious humor -- explodes on screen producing the energy, and the insights, that the director is searching for.
The director uses multiple cameras, mixes cinema verite and conventional shooting styles and experiments with a variety of other cinematic techniques including the use of simultaneous split-screen images. The result is a film with multiple levels of reality that reveals, and comments upon, the creative process.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One may well be the first self-reflexive feature film to have been produced in cinema verite style. Greaves compares the making of “Symbio” to jumping off a cliff without a parachute.
http://www.williamgreaves.com/symbio_takeone.htm
A FEW PRESS REACTIONS...
“… a witty, still-timely and extraordinary satire on filmmaking theory and technique that ranks with the liveliest formal experiments of Jean-Luc Godard, John Cassavetes and Andy Warhol.”
Armond White, The City Sun
“… a movie that enters our film history so decisively it seems like it’s always been there.”
J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
“The structure of this work – now hailed as a landmark in black American cinema – is a film-within-a-film, but that is only the staring point.”
Desmond Ryan, The Philadelphia Inquirer
“…an unappreciated gem.”
David Sterritt, The Christian Science Monitor
“… a lost treasure. Pre-dating much of the New American Cinema of the late sixties, TAKE ONE is a rare example of American New Wave filmmaking…”
The Brooklyn Museum’s Program Notes
“… the film holds up now in terms of relevance better than ever. When it’s not just plain funny, it’s brutally hones. As much as the crew in the film questions the motives and mentality of their director, in real life, we find ourselves questioning the assumptions that inform our actions and reactions in various political scenarios.
Tom Wachunas, The Phoenix
“The Dead Sea Scrolls can now be seen by anyone, and so too can SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE… this 1968 movie will be making more than a few waves in the year to come, as critics and viewers alike discover it.”
Phil Anderson, Minneapolis City Pages

good quality copy timecoded as seen above, not really annoying, it's quite hard to come by.