ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates two of Beckett’s films, Flesh Flows and the never-completed Life in the Atom. These are discussed in relationship to his earlier work and to the cultural context of the time that was shifting from the sexual revolution of the 1960s to the economic reality of the 1970s. Contemporaneous work included Ralph Bakshi’s animated features Fritz the Cat (1972) and Heavy Traffic (1973). In examining the “carnal” in these films, we look at the broader range of Beckett’s art: prints, flyers, comics, and thousands of drawings. Gene Youngblood’s articulation of “synaesthetic cinema” and “polymorphous sexuality” in Expanded Cinema is a touchstone in considering the cosmic experience of Flesh Flows. The year 1974 was a pivotal time, as Beckett was awarded an AFI filmmakers grant for a new animation and was also selected for inclusion in the “Animation” program at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, in the New American Filmmakers series. He started his studio, Infinite Animation, Ltd., and had his films distributed through Ron Epple’s Picture Start. He was interviewed in November of 1974 by Robert Russett for inclusion in the seminal first edition of Experimental Animation.
