Guns of the Trees deals with the thoughts, feelings, and anguished strivings of my generation, faced with the moral perplexity of our times. Conceived as an episodic, horizontal film, there is no apparent direct story connection between one scene and the next. The scenes act like pieces of a larger, timed, emotional mosaic. Where the direct word, or the direct image, fails —when we come to more essential things— the indirectness of the poet will seize the essence and the truth. —J.M.

It is a bitter but lyric work. It is also revolutionary in form, being unlike, in its technique, anything you ever saw. It is a poster declaration, a manifesto. I regard Guns of The Trees as the most important film by far of the American 'New Wave'. —Herman G. Weinberg