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Photochemical Underworlds

Heavy visions of annihilation and ascension

Grateful Dead (Robert Nelson 1960, 16mm)

Chumlum (Ron Rice 1964, 16mm)

Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda (Ira Cohen 1968, 16mm)

All films projected on 16mm

Prints courtesy New York Filmmakers Co-op, National Film and Sound Archive.

A joint project OtherFillm / IMA

J. Hoberman in the Mar. 16, 2006 Village Voice: "Part 'Dr. Strange,' part 'Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome,' ['The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda' is] so High '60s that you emerge from its 20-minute vision perched full-lotus on a cloud of incense, chatting with a white rabbit and smoking a banana.... 'Invasion' is a languidly opiated costume ball in which an assortment of masked and painted bohos, some sporting outsize elf ears, loll about a candlelit, Mylar-lined set, blowing soap bubbles and nibbling majoon. ...In lieu of action, Cohen uses all manner of superimposition and prismatic image-splitting; his big effect, however, is the deliquescent Mylar reflection. What saves 'Invasion' from preciosity is the vague menace of Angus MacLise's improvised pan-piping, tabla-tapping, creature-yipping score. Although this masterpiece of Tibetan-Moroccan-Druidic trance music was reissued on CD several years ago, it truly blossoms in conjunction with the exotic smorgasbord served at Cohen's psychedelicatessen."