New Left Note

“Levine’s rapid fire cutting has never found a more appropriate subject than in NEW LEFT NOTE, his film on the anti-war, anti-racist, and women’s liberation movements of the early 1970’s in America. New Left Note represents a synthesis of ideas that Levine sought to inject into a much divided movement. The ‘Free Bobby Seale’ demonstrations in New Haven (Levine’s home town) in 1970 is put into context through the editing… At the time of shooting, Levine was the editor of New Left Notes, the national newspaper of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). He was unilaterally committed to the movements he filmed but beleaguered by the leadership of the organization for his non-sectarian views…(NEW LEFT NOTE) is a study of radical politics in radical form.” – Marjorie Keller.
“The life he records is a jumble of demonstrations, fused with the kaleidoscopic fury of memory; its brief reprises include a catnap in the back of a car and a glimpse of a zoo. His incessant, chaotic outpouring of political energy seems less geared to a naive notion of bettering the world than to a perpetual pressure to keep it from getting worse.” – P Adams Sitney, Village Voice.