I met Stan Brakhage, I have to check somewhere the records. I met Stan Brakhage, I think, in '55, that was '55, at the Living Theatre during his first presentation, first screening of his, I think, five first films. The Living Theatre was a very experimental avant-garde theatre and that... in the... those days and it was on Broadway and 100th Street. They had just finished running Strindberg's Dreams, I remember, so the screening was organised by Marie Menkin, Hans Richter and Willard Mass. So I met him there and I was... I was very, very, very much taken with what I saw. I thought here is the new cinema, here is the avant-garde of today, here is what I'm interested in. He... there was so much energy, it was so different from everything that I had seen. Of course, then we met, you know, many times, we... we remained... we had some arguments during some periods of our lives, but we remained friends to the very end, but Stan always needed some enemies, some... he had to have some, like... somebody to argue with. So he... and later he changed, he agreed, you know, for the opposite party, you know, like, one example would be when he decided that Michael Snow is really practically an enemy of the avant-garde film as every film-maker who is working in the sort of structural or form of cinema, structural cinema.

There's sort of defined my P Adams Sitney and film, you know, the issues of film culture, that that kind of cinema is... really is destroying the avant-garde film and he had some very... we had some very, almost wild, confrontations and he denounced Michael Snow and did not talk to Michael Snow until, like, 10 years... for about 10 years when decided again, looked at the film at The Central Region at Wavelength and decided that he was wrong. So he, you know, he... again they were friends. So he... he needed that type of... he always needed something to oppose... that kept him going and helped him sort of to concentrate on... on what he was himself all about. But, I mean, he, of course... he's a figure that has changed drastically the American avant-garde. With him I consider begins the post Maya Deren, the new... the new American avant-garde same as with abstract expressionists or action painters start, we have the new painting.