| John Moret |
America: Everything You’ve Ever Dreamed Of plays at the Trylon Cinema from Friday, February 21st, through Sunday, February 23rd. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
A regular at the theater recently asked me to describe the short films of Tony Ganz and Rhody Streeter. I took a moment and realized I wasn’t quite sure how. Perhaps we could compare it to the early work of Errol Morris, but comparisons to things you like never seem to have the effect you hope for. Taking a step back, I think I can now go a bit further. I’ll start with what drew me to these films in the first place.
I receive many screeners and idea pitches for Trylon programming. Often, I feel like I am swimming in an ocean of films. The Film Desk, a film distribution company run by Jake Perlin in New York City, has long been one of my favorites to work with. He finds the work of seemingly invisible filmmakers like Michael Roemer (Nothing But A Man and Vengeance is Mine) and beloved auteurs like Claire Denis (No Fear, No Die), and treats that work with a level of care that apparently no one else thought it needed. He publishes beautiful books and commissions new essays on these films. So, when Jake sends me something, I take note and watch it as soon as I’m able. With Ganz and Streeter’s collection, I knew I was in for something special almost immediately. There are so many great moments and images. My favorite line from The Best of Your Life, for instance, is “Conditions in America today are frightening… we just have to do something drastically different than the do-gooding that has been going on all over this nation. We found what we consider a haven in Sun City. There are a few liberals here, but it is basically an American community.” That made me laugh out loud, even all alone.
America: Everything You’ve Ever Dreamed Of is a collection of caustic and deadpan shorts shot on 16mm. These short documentaries create hilarious, indelible portraits of materialism, cultural conformity and the forces that craft our view of the so-called “American” identity. Ganz and Streeter follow retirees in Sun Valley, honeymooners in the Poconos, sign painters in Brooklyn, help-line operators, female comportment instructors, Muzak executives, The Campus Crusade for Christ, and the denizens of a Bowery men’s shelter. Weaving together interviews and well-timed edits, their film style is far more attuned to the docs that would come two decades later. These films, however, have an immediacy and honesty that sorely lacks in the derisive and haughty films of, say, Michael Moore.
Maybe making sense of Nixon’s America through the lens of honeymoon hotels and muzak companies is a bit opaque. Maybe. But: I think it’s a better indicator than the cues that pundits parrot. I found myself following the throughline and creating a clearer picture of the people that make up Trump’s America. At our core, we have become a shallow society that leans on our prosperity as our identity—and, more than ever, our barometer of moral character. We dreamed of a country owned by gated communities making music for maximum efficiency and made it so.
Originally airing in the satirical variety show The Great American Dream Machine (1971) and later The 51st State (1972 – 1976)—an experimental news program that aired locally in the New York area—these shorts illuminated elements of the absurdities of the American experience in ways that audiences had never seen before. Their films were later screened at MoMA, Film Forum and the Whitney Museum, as well as in a program curated by Amos Vogel at the Annenberg School for Communication. Fifty years on, these shorts are completely obscure. Sourced from private collectors and dedicated film programmers who saved and valued these prints, Perlin’s Film Desk restorations allow us to show them to an entirely new audience.
A rundown of the shorts included:
THE BEST OF YOUR LIFE (aka SUN CITY) (1971, 8.5 min, 16mm-to-digital)
HONEYMOON HOTEL (1971, 3.5 min, 16mm-to-digital)
RISEN INDEED (aka CAMPUS CRUSADE FOR CHRIST) (1972, 5.5 min, 16mm-to-digital)
HOI – VILLAGE LIFE IN TONGA (1967-69, 8.5-min excerpt, 16mm-to-digital)
A BETTER DAY IN EVERY WAY (aka MUZAK) (1972, 5.5 min, 16mm-to-digital)
HELP-LINE (1972, 5.5 min, 16mm-to-digital)
WOMAN UNLIMITED (1972, 4 min, 16mm-to-digital)
SIGN PAINTERS (aka SIGNS) (1972, 6 min, 16mm-to-digital)
BOWERY MEN’S SHELTER (1973, 10 min, 16mm-to-digital)
A TRIP THROUGH THE BROOKS HOME (1971-73, 7.5 min, 16mm-to-digital)
Total running time: ca. 65 min.
-John Moret, Trylon film programmer
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon