Piero Heliczer (June 20, 1937 – July 22, 1993) was an Italian-American poet, publisher, actor and filmmaker associated with the New American Cinema. Heliczer was born in Rome to a German mother and a Polish father, both jewish. His film career began at the age of four when, ironically, he won a contest indicted by fascist regime 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 in The Bicycle Thief (1948). When Heliczer was seven years old, his father, a doctor and resistance fighter, was tortured and executed by the Gestapo. 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. 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 composer Angus MacLise. Heliczer published "alternative" authors, including himself, MacLise, the Finnish poet and translator Anselm Hollo, the Beat poet Gregory Corso, and the underground filmmaker Jack Smith, in whose film Flaming Creatures Heliczer appeared in 1963. In 1960 Heliczer moved to London, where he collaborated on his first film, Autumn Feast, with Jeff Keen. After moving to New York in 1962 he became involved with the Film-Makers' Cooperative, appearing in films by Jack Smith and Andy Warhol. Eventually he bought his own 8mm camera and resumed making experimental films, including Satisfaction, Venus in Furs, Joan of Arc (in which Warhol appeared), and an "unfinished three-hour epic," Dirt. With their primitive technique, anti-Catholic bent, and depictions of alternative sexuality, his films are often compared to those of Jack Smith and were praised by Jonas Mekas. 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 called The Launching of the Dream Weapon in early 1965, later changed their name to the Velvet 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. In November 1965, during the filming of Venus in Furs, the Velvet Underground and Heliczer were featured in a CBS News segment titled "The Making of an Underground Film," which aired the following month. This brief appearance turned out to be the only network television exposure for either Heliczer or the band. Venus in Furs was named after a Velvet Underground song inspired by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's eponymous sadomasochistic novel. It features Barbara 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. 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. In 1984 he returned to Normandy, where he spent his remaining years working in a secondhand bookstore. He was killed in July 1993 when his moped was hit by a truck near Rambouillet. He is buried in Préaux-du-Perche, France.