Frank O'Hara

In the summer of 1952, poets John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara and James Schuyler collaborated with filmmakers Harrison Starr and John Latouche on a short film in tribute to their mutual friend, the painter Jane Freilicher.

With Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, Ray Bremser, Le Roi Jones, Peter Orlovsky, this film takes place in the Living Theater, 1958.

"The poet Daisy Aldan (who brought Gerard Malanga into the world of experimental filmmaking) directed a beautifully evocative and impressionistic documentary, Once Upon an El, in 8mm color with a 7 1/2 ips tape soundtrack. The 15-minute film's cast included John Ashberry, James Broughton, Chester Kallman, Frank O'Hara, Olga Petroff, Kermit Sheets, and other luminaries of the Avant-Garde, the soundtrack was composed by Storm de Hirsch. Once Upon An El documented the activities of a group of writers and composers...[demonstrating] against the demolition of New York's Third Avenue elevated railway (FMC 1967, 7-8) , which was demolished anyway" - Wheeler Winston Dixon

a quiet, humorous mockumentary on cars, with Freilicher narrating Kenneth Koch’s text and Frank O’Hara as the pianist.

In the years after World War II the New York School of Poets set a new agenda for American literature with poetry that did not shy away from common language, cliches and humor. The core of the movement was a small group of writers including Museum of Modern Art curator Frank O'Hara and his friends John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch.

In this short film, comprising a single shot, a man and woman take a car ride through downtown Manhattan. The woman speaks in double-talk Finnish, which is interpreted into a brilliantly beautiful story through subtitles written by O’Hara.