ONWARD!

Join us for the second event as part of the 70th annual Flaherty Film Seminar, ONWARD! 

This special event presents William Greaves’ iconic work of cinéma vérité ​Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1971) alongside Grace Ndiritu​’s hallucinatory ​Black Beauty (2021). Both films explore the boundaries of the documentary form through various levels of cinematic reality and fictions.

The screening will be followed by an hour long discussion where the audience is invited to consider the films together.

This programme has been devised to coincide with Grace Ndiritu’s exhibition Compassionate Rebels in Action (part of The Ignorant Art School) at Cooper Gallery, Dundee.

Tickets

Book free tickets through LUX Scotland

Programme Schedule

William Greaves, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, (1981), 75 mins
Grace Ndiritu, Black Beauty, (2021), 29 mins
Discussion

About the films

Cinéma vérité reaches a new level of reality in ​‘Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One’ (1971), a film-within-a-film in which director William Greaves dares to break the accepted rules of cinema.

It’s 1968 and Greaves and his crew are in New York’s Central Park ostensibly filming a screen test. The drama involves a bitter break-up between a married couple. But this is just the ​“cover story.” The real story is happening ​“off” camera as the enigmatic director pursues his hidden agenda. The growing conflict and chaos — accompanied by moments of uproarious humor — explodes on screen, producing the energy and the insights that the director is searching for.

Greaves uses multiple cameras, mixes cinéma vérité and conventional shooting styles and experiments with a variety of other cinematic techniques, including the use of simultaneous split-screen images. The result is a film with multiple levels of reality that reveals, and comments upon, the creative process.

‘Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One’ may well be the first self-reflexive feature film to have been produced in cinéma vérité style. Greaves compares the making of ​“Symbio” to jumping off a cliff without a parachute.

Grace Ndiritu’s directorial debut ​‘Black Beauty’ (2021), is a fictionalised meeting between African fashion model Alexandra Cartier and Jorge Luis Borges in a visionary hallucination. What does the famous Argentine modernist writer have to say about our contemporary ecological and pandemic problems?

About Flaherty Seminar

ONWARD! The 70th edition of the Flaherty Film Seminar took place from June 26–29, 2025. This special anniversary edition offered an immersive programme of screenings and carefully moderated conversations. As an internationally recognised forum for collective inquiry into the form and function of non-fiction cinema, the Seminar fostered field-building dialogue, encouraged the exchange of cinematic ideas across generations and cultures, and promoted the expansion of the limits of cinema itself.

In Autumn 2025, LUX Scotland will host three events as part of the 70th annual Flaherty Seminar in partnership with The Hunterian, Cooper Gallery and the Centre for Screen Cultures at the University of St Andrews. Expanding on the Flaherty Seminar’s 70th edition ‘ONWARD!’ held in New York City in June 2025, this series of Gatherings will present and bridge connections from films selected from the Seminar screenings which were programmed by Janaína Oliveira, Carlos Gutiérrez, and Richard Herskowitz, alongside programming partners Christopher Harris, Zaina Bseiso, and Louis Massiah. As unique and discursive events, each Gathering will offer the opportunity for the audience to engage in discussion as we explore the history and current movements in non-fiction filmmaking.

Members of the LUX Scotland team had the opportunity to attend the Seminar in New York City with support from the Art Fund’s Jonathan Ruffer curatorial grants. We would like to thank Samara Chadwick (The Flaherty Executive Director), Juan Pedro Agurcia (The Flaherty Program Director) and Philippa Lovatt (Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews) for their help and support in devising these events.