February 2026

The Political Theatre of Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

Filmed in the summer of 1968, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One is an experimental documentary film by African-American director (and producer and actor) William Greaves (1926-2014), who was, at the time, executive producer of the American public affairs television program Black Journal. Black Journal covered issues relevant to African-American communities — such as the civil rights and Black Power movements in the late 1960s — in a monthly hour-long broadcast that earned Greaves an Emmy and helped set the stage for a distinguished career. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One is an avant-garde outlier among Greaves’s more journalistic documentaries. It uniquely demonstrates cinema’s ability to bend time and space into new realities, using a...more