Piero Heliczer
Born	Piero Giorgio Heliczer (1937-06-20)June 20, 1937 Rome, Italy
Died	July 22, 1993(1993-07-22) (aged 56) NearRambouillet, France
Occupation(s)	poet, publisher, actor, filmmaker

Piero Heliczer (June 20, 1937 – July 22, 1993) was an Italian-American poet, publisher, actor and filmmaker associated with theNew American Cinema.

Heliczer was born in Rome to a German mother and a Polish father. His film career began at the age of four when, ironically, he won a contest for the "most typical-looking Italian child." Acting under the name "Pier Giorgio Heliczer," he played minor roles in Italian films as a child, including, by his own account, an uncredited supporting role inVittorio De Sica'sThe Bicycle Thief (1948). When Heliczer was seven years old, his father, a doctor and resistance fighter, was tortured and executed by theGestapo.^[1] The boy emigrated with his mother to the United States in the 1940s, graduated high school at the top of his class, and enrolled at Harvard in 1955.^[2] After two years he dropped out and moved to Paris, where he co-founded the Dead Language Press with his high school friend, the poet and composerAngus MacLise.^[3]

Heliczer published "alternative" authors, including himself, MacLise, the Finnish poet and translatorAnselm Hollo, theBeat poetGregory Corso, and the underground filmmakerJack Smith, in whose filmFlaming Creatures Heliczer appeared in 1963.^[1][2]

In 1960 Heliczer moved to London, where he collaborated on his first film,Autumn Feast, withJeff Keen. After moving to New York in 1962 he became involved with theFilm-Makers' Cooperative, appearing in films by Jack Smith andAndy Warhol. Eventually he bought his own 8mm camera and resumed makingexperimental films, includingSatisfaction,Venus in Furs,Joan of Arc (in which Warhol appeared), and an "unfinished three-hour epic,"Dirt.^[1] With their primitive technique, anti-Catholic bent, and depictions of alternative sexuality, his films are often compared to those of Jack Smith.^[2]

Most of Heliczer's films were silent, with sound added later. In some cases he used live musicians to provide a soundtrack. One band, the Falling Spikes, who played for a Heliczer show calledThe Launching of the Dream Weapon in early 1965, later changed their name to theVelvet Underground. At Heliczer's multimedia shows, which he called "ritual happenings," his films were projected through veils hung in front of the screen with colored lights and slides superimposed on them, while dancers performed onstage and musicians played in the background.^[4] Andy Warhol began organizing similar events in 1966; hisExploding Plastic Inevitable incorporated many of the same techniques and performers.^[5]

In November 1965, during the filming ofVenus in Furs, the Velvet Underground and Heliczer were featured in aCBS News segment titled "The Making of an Underground Film," which aired the following month.^[3] This brief appearance turned out to be the only network television exposure for either Heliczer or the band.^[2][3]Venus in Furs was named after aVelvet Underground song inspired byLeopold von Sacher-Masoch's eponymoussadomasochistic novella. It featuresBarbara Rubin, another underground filmmaker, dressed as a nun. Angus MacLise, who at the time was still the drummer for the Velvets, also appears in the film. MacLise contributed numerous soundtracks for Heliczer's films, and appears in at least one other,Satisfaction, along withJohn Cale.^[3]

In December 1965, Heliczer'sThe Last Rites was included in the New Cinema Festival (also known as the Expanded Cinema Festival), an extensive series of multimedia productions in New York presented byJonas Mekas and featuring the work of such artists asRobert Rauschenberg andClaes Oldenburg.^[6] Afterwards Mekas wrote in theVillage Voice, "Three new film-makers have appeared on the scene with glimpses of beauty and promises for the future: Andy Meyer,Robert Nelson, and Piero Heliczer."^[7]The Last Rites also made a lasting impression on the playwrightRichard Foreman, who recalled it years later as one of his favorites.^[8]

Mekas was even more impressed byDirt, writing in theVillage Voice:

Among all the new movies (it has been quiet lately on the underground scene) Piero Heliczer'sDirt touched me most deeply. Its beauty is very personal and lyrical. And every frame of it is cinema. I cannot do justice to this beautiful work in one paragraph. It was shot on 8mm and much of its beauty and its cinema come from 8mm properties of camera and film. It is all motion. Together withBrakhage'sSongs, Branaman's abstractions andKen Jacobs's not yet released work, Heliczer'sDirt is one of the four works that use 8mm film properly and for art's sake.^[9]

Many years after the murder of his father, Heliczer was awarded a sum of money by the German government in compensation. He gave much of it away to fellow artists, but kept enough to try and establish a filmmaker's cooperative in Paris like the one in New York. He also bought a small house in Normandy. The filmmaker's cooperative was not a success, so he moved to Amsterdam, where he lived on a houseboat for a time. Vandals sank the boat, leaving him homeless, and he spent some time living on the streets of New York.^[3] In 1984 he returned to Normandy, where he spent his remaining years working in a secondhand bookstore. The 56-year-old filmmaker was killed in July 1993 when his moped was hit by a truck^[1][2] nearRambouillet. He is buried inPréaux-du-Perche, France.

Of the many films Heliczer made, some are lost, in full or in part, and only a few are still in circulation. Heliczer's publications are also hard to find. In 1979, the poetGerard Malanga edited the ninth issue ofDennis Cooper's zineLittle Caesar and presented several hundred pages of tributes to and reminiscences of Heliczer. In 2001, Malanga assembled a collection of Heliczer's poetry titledA Purchase in the White Botanica.^[2] A collection of Heliczer publications was exhibited at the Boo-Hooray gallery in New York in 2014.^[10]

His daughter Thérèse Casper (née Heliczer) began making a documentary film about his life in 2013.^[11][12][13] Another daughter, Wynn Heliczer, is an actress.^[14]

• Imprimatur 1281, Dead Language Press, Paris, late 50s / early 60s.
• you could hear the snow dripping and falling into the deers mouth [sic], Dead Language Press, Paris, late 50s / early 60s.
• & i dreamt i shot arrows in my amazon bra: a poem in eleven takes, Matrix Press / Dead Language Press, London, 1963.
• The Soap Opera, Trigram Press, London, 1967. Includes illustrations by Andy Warhol,Wallace Berman and Jack Smith.
• The First Battle of the Marne, Dead Language Press, London, November 1969.
• The Plays of Piero Heliczer, Vols. I–III, Dead Language in cooperation with Paris Filmmakers Cooperative, Preaux, 1971
• The Handsome Policeman, Moon Dragon Press, 1976.
• Sundays Child, early 80s.
• Abdication of the Throne of Hell, Amsterdam School Of Poetry / Vertaling Hans Plomp, Amsterdam, 1981.
• Leadbelly, ca. 1988.
• The Perfect Detective, Sovo Production, Amsterdam, 1989.
• And I Am Not Afraid of the Dark, The Beehive Press, New Jersey, 1991.
• A Purchase in the White Botanica: The Collected Poetry of Piero Heliczer. Edited byAnselm Hollo andGerard Malanga.Granary Books, 2001,ISBN 1-887123-57-1
• Exiled from Amsterdam, Artistiek Bureau, Groningen, 2021.ISBN 9789083144917
• Poems & Documents, After 8 Books, Paris, 2021. Edited by Sophie Vinet and Benjamin Thorel.ISBN 978-2-492650-00-0

• Children of Albion poetry anthology
• Joan of Arc (album)

• Piero Heliczer Web Page byTom Raworth
• Piero Heliczer films at theAnthology Film Archives
• Heliczer readingyou coul(d) hear the snow dripping and falling into the deers mouth
• A Documentary Film about Piero Heliczer
• A checklist of writing, publishing and film by Piero Heliczer

• American experimental filmmakers
• Performance art in New York City
• Italian emigrants to the United States
• 1937 births
• 1993 deaths
• Road incident deaths in France

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