Hallelujah the Hills (1963) by Adolfas Mekas

Sunday, March 12, 1989, 8:00 pm

Films by Adolfas Mekas & Robert Downey

HALLELUJAH THE HILLS (1963) & CHAFED ELBOWS (1966)

SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE

800 Chestnut Street

San Francisco, CA, 94133

HALLELUJAH THE HILLS (1963) by Adolfas Mekas
CHAFED ELBOWS (1966) by Robert Downey

These two great underground comedy classics are among the most stylisti­cally influential independent films of the early ‘60’s. Hallelujah the Hills and Chafed Elbows have been characterized as intellectual “hellzapoppin” slapstick poems. Hallelujah… centers around the comic misadventures of two men in love with the same woman, while Chafed Elbows concerns a man who marries his mother and then goes on welfare. Absurdly funny and highly lyrical portraits of the American character emerge from both. Downey went on to make such challenges to “good taste” as Putney Swope and Greasers’ Palace.