It was basically that we ended in small town called Forty Fort, Pennsylvania which Steina had uncle in
that small community Forty Fort and of course I didn't speak any English and I was just watching TV
and learned everything at the beginning from TV but I didn't understand much and I didn't speak it and
I had a teacher and he was using some new method and he didn't speak my language so you couldn't
really converse about anything and I disappointed him, he was a young man and since it was lots of our
time, but at that time Steina took us in, it was nice house, everything was nice about Pennsylvania, it
was quiet neighborhood, next town was bigger, there were some Polish villages and there used to be
mines so there were lots of Poles, who played accordions on the porches so it was almost a nightmare
that I was begged in East Europe, but after that Steina was practicing violin and she had a teacher in
Scranton, so we would commute a little bit between Scranton and Wilgsburry and Forty Fort which was
kind of interesting for a while, we got car and I got this test driving license without speaking English
which was very funny and then we kind of departed for New York because Steina's teacher, that was
probably about after half a year but she will know probably more about the time.
And then we by chance got into this International House and there were really international house, it
was upper, near the 125th street, on Manhattan on the west side, and so that's where we met total
international environment, Polish people and Yugoslaves and Russians and who is who, Czechs.
So it was a meeting place for people who came from Europe?
It was a place where they studied already, that continuation of education, or just to have a transit so I
went to classes of English at Colombia, I am Colombian graduate, and it was brilliant young Jewish
lady who was so fantastic and she drilled us, so it was for the first time, except German which I had
since the age of six, I was drilled in English which helped me finally a lot because I understood a lot
what it means to have a drill in language, like could be should be, ought to be, it was, it went, all that
connotation of words, she said, the rest is just a dictionary. And so she got us straights, and there were
people from Vietnam and monks and one would say, why do you wear glasses, I said what do you
mean, oh, when you don't see, just look inside. That jerk it was, no, but he was good...
So it was that kind of school, and then I started to speak it, and I was interested in film so I went into
some screenings, first time I understood there was a kind of avant-garde. I didn't have much respect for
American avant-garde because we had that in Europe, remember that?
But did you know about it in Europe, about American avant-garde?
No, I had to rediscover it, I knew much more about literature, because there was this Světová literatura
which was a perfect introduction because they liked American avant-garde, they liked Kerouac and
Ferlingetti and all these other guys and so I was prepared for, but really for film and I didn't have much
respect because it was something what was really personal, which in Europe you would call
amateurish. Only much later I realized that in fact this it was the art for an individual, it shouldn't be
never mixed up with Hollywood, this is what we talked about with Gene Youngblood yesterday a little
bit, the dimension of the personal film has very little to do with film, it's like poetry and prose and that's
different.
At that time of course I started to work in film, first as an assistant to an editor with Alexander Hammid
and Francis Thomson. And Francis Thompson and Hammid they were known to be already part of the
American avant-garde. Francis Thompson made this film about New York, abstract film, and Hammid
had long history of experimental film, for Baťa and other...
So how did you meet them?
Very good question, who connected us, I would have to think about it, but probably... I don't remember,
but anyway I visited the studio and they happened to have the summer job, to fix the first or second
multi-screen called “To be Alive”, it was from the exhibit in Montreal and it was supposed to be
synchronous and I was repairing these, after they send it for three weeks or so, they had like free copies
that they run, it was in Jonson's Flags pavilion.
At that time I met virtually everybody who was who, who was interested in independent, since we were
independents, they had the company and they had three-screen projection, synchronous, I inherited
later some piece of synchronous machinery, so I was fixing it and then I started to make my own 16mm
experiment, mostly related to 360-degree recordings, which I have some strips that I plan to put into
some publication, I also built some simple things on a kitchen table...
