A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

I've been thinking about that movie a lot as I've worked on my new book [

Understand Your Dreams: 1,001 Basic Dream Images and How to Interpret Them,

published by H. J. Kramer in 1991]. I knew when I made that film that I was taking a big chance, that it might scandalize and disturb people.

Near the Big Chakra

was made in 1971, at the end of that first great wave of feminism, which certainly opened the door to a lot of forbidden thoughts and issues. I think as a film it created a certain space.

Janis Joplin was a neighbor of mine. She used to sing with Big Brother and the Holding Company at a ratty little bar in Berkeley called the Blind Lemon. I was living with a man from Texas at the time; he had been a student at the University of Texas when Janis was there. She had been much maligned because she violated a lot of ideas about how women were supposed to behave. They weren't supposed to be sloppy, loud, drunk; they were supposed to comb their hair, shave under their arms . . . looking back now, it doesn't seem so radical or unconventional. But when she was first performing, she was on the edge, and I really appreciated that. By taking such an extreme position, she made all the space in between available.

Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panthers did a similar thing when they first started expressing that macho, potentially violent image of black men, holding big guns and wearing black leather. They created a much larger space for all black men, by taking an extreme position.

MacDonald:

The film certainly makes sense in that context, but how did you come to the idea of filming vulvas in extreme close-up?

Severson:

I told that story in the

Spare Rib

article ["Don't Get Too Near the Big Chakra,"

Spare Rib,

No. 20 (February 1974); reprinted in

Spare Rib Reader,

ed. Marsha Rowe (London: Penguin Books, 1982), pp. 312318]. I got the idea to make the movie one day in California when my teenage daughter was lounging nude in the sun after a bath, casually exposing herself. I found myself staring at her vagina. When she

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noticed me, she said, "Mother, for heaven's sakes!" We both felt a little embarrassed.

Later it seemed odd to me that, first, I had not looked at that part of her body since she was very small, and second, that my curiosity had made me uncomfortable, as though there was something wrong with my interest. I realized that I had never seen any woman's vagina except in crotch-shots in pornographic films and magazines or close-ups in birth films. I asked my women friends if they had ever looked at other women's vaginas. One or two, with bisexual experience, assured me they had; most hadn't. Few wanted to pursue the matter.

I started talking about making a film about vaginas. Men filmmaker friends listened to me with distaste. Bob Nelson was the first to support me. He became interested and, in a burst of enthusiasm, produced the title.

His wife, Diane, and I were taking a yoga class together and I was intrigued that the first chakra one gains control of, or "awakens" in yogic terms, was located between the genitals and the anus. "Chakra" is Sanskrit for wheels or centers of radiating life force. Joseph Campbell calls them "centers of consciousness." There are seven or eight, depending upon the system you follow. The first is located at the base of the spine. It's the chakra of pure physical being, survivalthe place where you just hang on.

The second is where all psychological energy is erotic or creative. I was jokingly calling it the "big chakra" because in the early seventies we all seemed to be stuck at this level of development. It also seemed to me that the way out of this morass was to transform some of this energy into art. In the proposed film I wanted to focus on the same area that our energy was flowing from in the beginning yoga class. I also hoped to creatively release some of this energy for myself and other women in order to move on up the cerebrospinal ladder.

Anyway, enough people told me it was a terrible idea that I should not pursue under any circumstances that I definitely decided to do it.

Near the Big Chakra

assumes that it's a good idea to take a look at things, even if they're forbidden, or taboo, or frightening, or exciting, or mysterious, or dangerous. I guess that's one of my basic assumptions about what's interesting to do in the world and also what's interesting to do in art.

MacDonald:

How did you find participants?

Severson:

I went to Glide Methodist Church in San Francisco. At that time the church was very active in the area of human sexuality. Later, the group at Glide evolved into Multi Media Resource Center. They presented all kinds of sexuality seminars and classes.

I approached them and asked if they'd produce the film and, in fact,

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From Severson's

Near the Big Chakra

 (1972).