Page 332
taking myself seriously as a filmmaker. When I had finished
Chakra,
I sent it to Ann Arbor, and I hadn't heard anything about it. I assumed they didn't like it. The next year when I came to be a judge, I heard incredible stories about
Chakra
being screened there the year before. Apparently I had been invited to be a judge because the board of the festival wanted to see the person who made
that
movie.
I learned that at the previous festival the judges couldn't agree to give
Chakra
a prize, but they had decided to show it in the festival as the last film on the last nighta position traditionally reserved for exciting new movies. Everyone was curious about the fact that the exciting new film being shown last, made by someone who had won first prize before, had not won a prize and was not included on the Ann Arbor tour. There was a huge crowd. When the film came on the event turned into a riot. The theater had a projection booth above the audience that you got to by ladder. Someone in the audience was so outraged by the film that he had climbed up and tackled the projectionist, Peter Wilde. They wrestled on the floor, the guy determined to pull the film out of the projector. People were booing and yelling and leaving. A woman stood at the door and, as people tried to walk out, she would swing her long shoulder bag by the handle and hit them over the head. When I met her the next year, she said, ''You know, I would kill for that film." I thought, "My god, how could this have created so much furor?" I loved hearing about it, but I'm also glad I missed that screening.
MacDonald:
Did you show the film outside the standard avant-garde screening spaces?
Severson:
Sometimes. One summer I showed
Chakra
in my hometown, Eugene, Oregon. I had wrongly assumed that this would be a straitlaced, middle-class crowd. What I had not anticipated was that Eugene (at that time) was the lesbian separatist capital of the world! I went through an elaborate presentation, trying to make people comfortable, making all the wrong assumptions about whom I was speaking to. After the program, I was answering questions, and someone asked about my intentions and whether I thought the film was erotic. I answered, "To my knowledge, no one has ever gotten a hard-on watching it." A woman in striped overalls stood up and said, "I did!" I loved thatbut it was a tough screening; I completely miscalculated my audience.
I was also invited to show
Chakra,
along with my other films, to medical students at the University of Southern California Medical School. I'd had some warning that the young doctors might be abusive, so I went with a friend who had a three-month-old baby, and I insisted on holding the baby all through the screening and during the question-and-answer period after. I recommend that if you expect to find yourself in a similar situation.