IN a minute they will dazzle. Any second they could blow your mind.
The wealth of archival photography and footage of news and cultural events that shaped the era is extraordinary. Haynes’ use not just of clips from the work of Warhol, Mekas and Smith, but also Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger, Maya Deren, Marie Menken, Barbara Rubin, Shirley Clarke and others — often playing in mind-bending juxtaposition on multiple screens within the screen — makes this an uncommonly cine-literate music doc and a rapturous homage to experimental art. Mekas says it all in one succinct interview snippet: “We are not part of the counterculture. We are the culture.”
Source: ‘The Velvet Underground’: Film Review | Cannes 2021 – The Hollywood Reporter