Richard O. Moore

Alfred Leslie is a pivotal American artist-painter-filmmaker whose work spans the past fifty years. A contemporary of the Abstract Expressionists and a key figure in the extraordinary social milieu of downtown New York from the 1950s and 60s to the present, his own canvases were amongst the most revered of his peers. In 1964 he made 'Pull My Daisy' with the photographer Robert Frank and in 1966 collaborated with the inimitable poet Frank O'Hara on 'The Last Clean Shirt'. Leslie dramatically moved away from abstraction to make giant almost hyper-real portraits, the majority of which were destroyed in the now infamous fire that ripped through his studio and its neighboring blocks on October 17, 1966. This devastating event, that completely destroyed paintings, films and manuscripts, continues to inform his work today.

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An interview with a young Toni Morrison. The video also shows Toni Morrison going shopping, at a party, and at work. Her commentary provides an incisive look behind her written words, and at the vision, technique, and lifestyle of this award-winning author. She reads from The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Song of Solomon.

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A feature length film from acclaimed dance choreographer Merce Cunningham.

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Documentary film about three veterans of the Civil Rights movement who have become peace spokesman for the new opposition activist. It traces their thought and action over the past year, as they see themselves moving from demonstration to political organizing.

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Born in 1904, and first published by Ezra Pound in 1927, Louis Zukosky is the poet whose name is associated with the term objectivists. Although never widely known as a poet, his work as well as his writings on poetry have served as an example and exerted an influence over an entire generation of American poets. He has lived most of his life in Brooklyn Heights. He has taught until recently at the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, and earlier at San Francisco State, Colgate, Queens College, and the University of Wisconsin. I was born young into a world that was already very old, says Zukofsky. Words for me are solid, he adds, even though sometimes they liquefy and sometimes they aerify. His readings in this episode range from his first published poem titled, A Poem Beginning The, to his monumental work still in progress, titled simple A, as well as his translations from Cavalcanti and Catullus.

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