Ben Van Meter’s experimental movies of the 1960s are informed by psychedelic drugs, music , and light’s magic act on 8mm film stock. They reflect (literally) the mind-altering effects of psychedelia as they helped create it. Van Meter uses home movie footage of hippies and rock concerts as a launching pad for stroboscopic collages that replicate the liquid lightshows of the era. I imagine that Van Meter’s films were part of those shows.

Van Meter also has a formidable collection of concert posters and memorabilia from the 1960s here.

Van Meter covered the pre-summer of love in San Francisco music / hippie scene, filming such ‘happenings’ as the first “Trips Festival” (1965), and legendary promotor Bill Graham’s first ever concert at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium (December, 1965) ...featuring important San Francisco scene personalities such as Grace Slick with her first band “The Great Society”, “The Warlocks” (precursors to the Grateful Dead), “The San Francisco Mime Troupe”, “Quicksilver Messenger Service” and other icons of the era.”

I’ve compiled a handful of Van Meter’s work from his Youtube sight for your viewing pleasure, and pleasurable it is. Included are: Bolex Peyote Bardo, S.F. Trips Festival, An Opening, Human Be-In footage from 1967 with a Grateful Dead soundtrack and a truly bizarre and ironic (considering Linkletter’s history with LSD) appearance by Van Meter and Bruce Connor on the Art Linkletter Show.

Van Meter recounts the making of S.F. Trips Festival, An Opening:

In January of 1966 the San Francisco Trips Festival was held at Longshoreman’s Hall in San Francisco. This was the seminal event of the 60’s rock scene. A lot of different folks did their thing including Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. I filmed it in my then inmitable style. I have always described it as “A documentary of the event from the pov of a goldfish in the koolaid bowl.” It is written about in all of the scholarly books about experimental film and has been hailed by one academic as, “The most psychedelic film ever made.” Whatever.

Enjoy the lysergic cinema of Ben Van Meter: