Richard Myers

THE PATH (1960)
16mm, bw, silent 24fps, 20m
“My first film, The Path, was based on a dream about a group of people on an ‘outing’ or a picnic. The people in the dream meet and greet one another and then walk around and through old houses, barns, and buildings. Inside these structures they pass by other people involved in various activities. A woman is folding clothes. A man is making paintings. A young girl is sitting in front of a mirror trying on different necklaces.” (R.M.)

WOOD ASSEMBLAGE – A CHILDREN’S ART PROJECT (1962)
16mm, color, sound, 13m
“A children’s art project done at the Norton, Ohio Elementary Schools in 1962. Using scrap wood the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders plan and make wooden sculptures that have a primitive totem-like quality. Professors James M. Someroski, and Marlene Mancini Frost of Kent State University assisted in the making of the film. Professor Fred Coulter composed and played the music.” (R.M.)

FIRST TIME HERE (1964)
16mm, bw, sound, 24m
“In First Time Here, I attempted to freely associate two or three dreams with the story of the four women who had an atomic bomb display at a carnival. I wanted the film to be a fantasy which represented various life cycles and, in a sense, to be a celebration of the absurd mess man has gotten himself into.” (R.M.)

THE CORONATION (1965)
16mm, bw, sound, 23m
“A coronation signifies the changing of the crown from one person to another. Significantly, here it also implies a transferring from one generation to another. The film also parallels events we read about every day in the newspapers from gangland killings to presidential assassinations.” (R.M.)

EVERYBODY KNOWS FAY WRAY (1967-68)
16mm, 25m
This film screened at the 6th Ann Arbor Film Festival in 1968, but has otherwise not apparently been in wider distribution. i will add more information to this listing as I discover it.

AKRAN (1969)
16mm, bw, sound, 118m
“Myers is unquestionably a major talent of the American avant-garde and Akran one of his most important films. A feature-length deluge of incessant, brilliant bursts of images (short takes and jump cuts, single frames in series, freeze frames slightly altered between takes) it creates a Joyce-like, dense and sombre mosaic of memory and sensory impressions, a texture instead of a plot, a dream-like flow of visually-induced associations often flashing by faster than they can be absorbed. Described by the director as an ‘anxious allegory and chilling album of nostalgia’, its penetrating monomania is unexpectedly — subversively — realized to be a statement about America today: the alienation and atomization of technological consumer society is reflected in the very style of the film.” (Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art)

CONFRONTATION AT KENT STATE (1970)
16mm, bw, sound, 43m
This was a collectively made film in direct and immediate response to the killing of four students (and wounding of others) by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University on May 4, 1970.
“On Monday afternoon, May 4, 1970, four students on Kent State’s campus were shot to death and many others seriously wounded by members of the Ohio National Guard. After that tragedy, some members of the faculty and student body of Kent State put together a motion picture which documents this confrontation. The filmmakers interviewed the people in the town of Kent, students, and faculty of the university, and a member of the National Guard . . . And they asked all these people the question “Do you think that the shooting of the students at Kent was justified?” The answers they received form the content of the film . . . and these answers raise disturbing questions about the nature of our society.” (R.M.)

ALLISON (1970)
16mm, bw, sound, 7m
On screen, this film’s title is “Allison Beth Krause”, but it is most commonly known as simply Allison.
“The film is a portrait of Allison Krause, one of the students murdered at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 by the Ohio National Guard. It is a memorial put together from footage that Richard Myers and his students filmed of Allison (unknowingly at the time) during student war demonstrations.” (R.M.)
“The soundtrack is Allison’s father … Arthur Krause … reading a poem about Allison written by Peter Davies … and reading a letter he wrote to Nixon … and one that was never answered ….” (R.M.)

AKBAR (1970)
16mm, color, sound, 16m
This film is subtitled as “Film Portrait Two”.
“A conversation with Ahmad Akbar, a black filmmaker, friend, and former film student at Kent State University. Akbar (not his real name), expresses an unusual view of himself, blacks in America, and such varied subjects as ‘This moon race shit!'” (R.M.)

BILL AND RUBY (1970)
16mm, color, sound, 34m
“Bill and Ruby owned a novelty store near Akron, Ohio. The film explores their world and their relationship to the ‘objects’ in the store—and to each other.” (R.M.)

DEATHSTYLES (1971)
16mm, color, sound, 60m
“I wanted the film to portray what a man sees as he is driving around a city, looking at people, observing cars and buses, etc. That idea soon changed. What began with the word Lifestyles, which was a cliché anyway, soon changed to Deathstyles.” (R.M.)

ZOCALO (1972)
16mm, color, sound, 15m
“Zocalo is a color, optically-printed experiment that uses as its base the Zocalo Square in Mexico City. Unlike my other films … it began as a class experiment … and because of my feelings towards the square itself … pursued it in all its variations … finished in December 1972.” (R.M.)

DA (1973)
16mm, bw, sound, 40m
This film is subtitled as “Film Portrait Number Three”.
“Nora Belle West Croft, better known as Da, is the 90-year-old grandmother of Richard Myers. She has appeared in three of his feature films. This film is a simple conversation with her at her home in Massillon, Ohio. Sharing her personal photo album prompts her recollections of early Massillon and details of everyday life. It is a loving portrait from grandson to grandmother.” (R.M.)

37-73 (1974)
16mm, bw, sound, 60m
“I was born in 1937, and the film was shot mostly in 1973. It begins with a song from my childhood that all the kids who lived around my father’s beer joint used to sing: Lemonade, lemonade, five cents a glass. If you don’t like it, stick it up your ask me no questions, tell me no lies, if you fall in a bucket of shit be sure and close your eyes.” (R.M.)

MASSILLON MUSEUM YEARS (1976)
video, bw, sound, 40m

FLOORSHOW (1978)
16mm, bw, sound, 90m
“Floorshow contains images that move back and forth, through past and present, dream and reality held together by threads or irrational consequences. It free associates and repeats scenes. It lays words on top of images, on top of sounds and speech and visuals, pulling at the viewer’s involvement and internalization.” (R.M.)

JUNGLE GIRL (1984)
16mm, bw, sound, 100m
“JUNGLE GIRL was originally a Republic Pictures serial made in 1941 starring Frances Gifford. My film began when I saw the entire serial for sale in a pulp publication, The Big Reel. I bought it immediately. JUNGLE GIRL was fifteen chapters, each about 20 minutes.
“I first saw JUNGLE GIRL when I was 11 years old. Republic Pictures had re-released it in 1946. I was mesmerized by the serial and in love with Frances Gifford who played Nyoka.” (R.M.)

MOVING PICTURES (1989)
16mm, bw, sound, 100m
“Moving Pictures began with a dream I had about a woman walking beside a woods and singing a beautiful aria. I didn’t remember the song, but for the film I selected Plaisir d’Amour by Jean Paul Égide Martini. The film soon became a series of other dream ideas as well. I wanted every scene in the film to be a tracking shot, moving from right to left like a dream scroll. I wanted the film to be quiet and contemplative, and I didn’t want to use subtitles.” (R.M.)

TARP (1993)
16mm, color, sound 20m
“Most of my longer films have been based on dreams and have been of a personal semi-autobiographical nature. Tarp represents my interest in more simple/basic visual themes: Color, shape, and “found object” filmmaking. I began “recording” all of the tarps in my immediate neighborhood and surrounding cities – tarps over cars and boats and campers, tarps as tents, on trucks and hanging from overpasses on freeways. The fragmented result still maintains a dream-like tone, yet speaks about the mysterious way we Americans cover-up and protect things and the strange locations in which we do it.” (R.M.)

MONSTERSHOW (1996)
16mm, bw, sound, 100m
“The film centers around two men who operate a traveling show. The barker, played by Alan Benson, narrates the three stories that are acted out on stage by Paul Schuster, who is also the driver. My objective was to experiment with the viewer’s response to constantly shifting information that pulls in different directions, and a narration combined with ostensibly unrelated imagery.” (R.M.)

MARJORY’S DIARY (2003)
video, color, sound, 90m
“Marjory’s Diary is a portrait of my (then) 94-year-old mother based on diaries she kept from 1924 to 1948. Marjory was an avid movie-goer and the video includes stills from more than 150 movies she saw between 1924 and 1948. These movies related to the tenor of the times, and in many cases, to the tenor of her personal life. Early photos of Marjory are intercut with images of her from some of the films I made in the 1960’s and 1970’s. There are also many photos of her mother, sisters, and brother, as well as my father Lew.” (R.M.)