Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

Three cameras record this documentary-in-a-documentary-in-a-documentary. Director William Greaves’s camera films the screen tests of a number of actors, while a second camera records Greaves and the actors, and a third films the whole thing. There is no plot or script, and the film is even more difficult to comprehend than its title is to pronounce.

All we know about the film at the heart of the documentary, for which the screen tests are being done, is the unremarkable working title Over the Cliff, and its theme, which is sexuality. Whether on the set or not, everything they film has to be “constantly related to sexuality,” Greaves instructs. Cast and crew guess at the director's intentions, and the third camera shows them heatedly discussing the project. Is he a genius, or just making it up as he goes along? “For all we know, Bill is standing outside that door, directing this whole scene. Maybe we're all acting,” one of them muses.

Like the audience, the crew is caught in a kind of no-man's land between fiction and non-fiction, accompanied by a jazz soundtrack by Miles Davis, while Greaves attempts to bring about a “creative piece of cinematic experience.”