In this installment of our ongoing Out of the Vault series, we present the premiere of three recent BAMPFA preservation projects, centered on the Beat era. The cornerstone of the program is ruth weiss’s The Brink, which Stan Brakhage called “one of the most ambitious ‘first’ films I’ve ever seen . . . [a] synthesis of poetry and image highly structured but containing a residue of very real immediate, almost haiku, feeling.” Shown with the new preservation print of The Brink are shorts by weiss’s close compatriots Paul Beattie and Steven Arnold.

Steve Seid writes: “Beat poet ruth weiss was no stranger to improvisation. In the late fifties, you could find her slamming choice words in North Beach’s legendary Cellar, accompanied by free-inventing jazz musicians. A few years later, painter-turned-filmmaker Paul Beattie would ask weiss to coax from the complex body of her verse a recitation of love among the ruins. The rollicking result, a film built around the existential musings of two contentious lovers, ‘He’ and ‘She,’ jettisons narrative logic for a skeptical embrace of the moment—the Beat moment.” 

Out of the Vault is made possible with the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts. The preservation of the BAMPFA prints was made possible with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation.