Hallelujah the Hills Blu-ray

An irreverent burst of anarchic energy that wowed attendees of the 1963 New York Film Festival, Hallelujah the Hills is a landmark film of the New American Cinema, presented here in a new 2K restoration. Directed with improvisatorial flair by Adolfas Mekas, a co-founder of Film Culture magazine with his brother Jonas (Walden), Hallelujah the Hills follows two wildly impulsive young men who are in love with the same woman (played by two different actresses). A slapstick love letter to cinema, this fiercely independent wonder laid the groundwork for all the free-spirited filmmakers to follow.

Adolfas Mekas, born in Lithuania, arrived in the United States with his brother Jonas in 1949. They founded Film Culture, the magazine of independent cinema, in 1954. Adolfas Mekas's Hallelujah the Hills bears witness to his knowledge and love of cinema, as well as the immense freedom to be found in all the films of the New American Cinema.

"Hallelujah the Hills is a gloriously funny and far-out farce about two great big overgrown boy scouts who pratfall in love with the same girl. The weirdest, wooziest, wackiest screen comedyS a slapstick poem, an intellectual hellzapoppin, a gloriously fresh experiment and experience in the cinema of the absurd, the first cubistic comedy of the new world cinema."
- Time Magazine, 1963.

"Even avowed enemies of the New American Cinema, so called, were impressed by the film's lack of pretentions and its unexpected lyricism and Zen serenity in the midst of nervous parody."
- Andrew Sarris, Village Voice, 1963

"A satire on the American way of life, and at the same time a hymn to the joys of youth and friendship."
- Richard Roud

"I don't doubt that Adolfas Mekas has extremely subtle and elaborate theories of cinema, but his film totally escapes the manifest. He is happy to carry us with disconcerting ease into a world of inspired horseplay, evoking novels by David Ogden Stewart or plays by Ring Lardner, but nothing that has ever been done in cinema."
- Robert Benayoun, 1963

35mm 1963 82min

with Peter H. Beard, Marty Greenbaum, Sheila Finn, Peggy Steffans, Jerome Hill, Taylor Mead. Camera: Ed Emshwiller. Assistant: Jonas Mekas. Editing: Adolfas Mekas. Music: Meyer Kupferman.

Blu-ray Extras Include:
Booklet essay by film historian John Pruitt | Hallelujah the Villa (2006), an interview with Adolfas Mekas (27 minutes) | The First New York Film Festival (1963), a roundtable discussion with Adolfas Mekas, Joseph Losey, Richard Roud, and Amos Vogel | An Interview with Ambassador from Lapland (1967), a short film by Adolfas Mekas