HERE ARE SOME PICTURES, WHAT IS HAPPENING? CHRISTOPHER MACLAINE & THE SAN FRANCISCO UNDERGROUND
30 September—7 October 2003
London The Other Cinema

CHRISTOPHER MACLAINE 

Poet / Writer / Filmmaker. Born 1923, Wapunucha, Oklahoma. Died 1975, San Francisco, California.

Christopher Maclaine was active in the early beatnik scene of North Beach in the 1940s and 1950s, as one of the authentic characters at the very emergence of the beat movement. He contributed to small periodicals along with his contemporaries Michael McClure, Robert Duncan, Kenneth Patchen and Philip Lamantia, and read poetry at late night rap sessions in coffee bars and jazz clubs. His introduction to the avant-garde film world came through exposure to the important “Art in Cinema” series at San Francisco Museum of Art, and personal connections with pioneer filmmakers Jordan Belson, Stan Brakhage, Larry Jordan and Harry Smith.

He was often completely broke, unable to keep jobs, and constantly relying on the generosity of others, whose patience he tested. Maclaine was a heavy user of amphetamines, which ultimately rendered him debilitated, resulting in his internment in hospital and early death. From the late 1950s he was addicted to methadrine, and in 1963 he attempted suicide, resulting in a three-month stay in the psychiatric ward of San Francisco General Hospital. He died in 1975, having spent his last six years in a completely incapacitated state in a convalescent home.

Maclaine edited four issues of the small magazine Contour (1947-49) and contributed to journals such as Neurotica, Tiger’s Eye, Beautitude, Goad and Golden Goose. He published three books of his own writing: The Automatic Wound (1948), The Crazy Bird (1951) and The Time Capsule (1960).

Maclaine made only four films, which until now have been rarely shown and are little known beyond a small circle of admirers. The films were brought into circulation in the mid-1960s by Stan Brakhage, who had encountered Maclaine in San Francisco in the 1950s. LUX has recently purchased brand new prints of the complete films of this obscure and mysterious Californian beat poet and hopes that they will now gain a new and appreciative audience.

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