June 13, 2025

I participated in a “Roundtable on Digital Experimental Cinema” for @octobermagazineofficial with Flo Jacobs. As I think about Flo’s death, I share here some of her brilliant and illuminating observations:

On experiencing a film installation:

“Flo Jacobs: I think the work has to be seen from beginning to end. You can’t just stroll in, visit it, and stroll out. You can say the same thing about a painting. You wouldn’t want somebody to cut a detail out of a painting at the Met and hang that up, would you?”

On digital editing:

“Flo Jacobs: Don’t you think the change really occurred when cheaper editing soft- ware like Final Cut Pro became readily available? Before that, there was Avid, but Avid was expensive. Then Final Cut Pro changed everything….problem with digital video is preservation. What’s going to happen in ten years?”

On live film performances:

“Flo Jacobs: But you can’t record it at all; it’s impossible. Every time we rehearse, it’s different, no matter what you do.”

We were joined by Ken Jacobs, @marklacalle , Luis Recoder, Federico Windhausen and Malcolm Turvey.

We all miss you Flo – painter, live film performer, mom, comrade to Ken, observer, deeply active member of the NYC experimental film community, dear friend, mom to Nisi Jacobs and @azazeljacobs.

May 17, 2025
My very first graduate seminar at the San Francisco Art Institute was taught be the ever-fascinating LARRY GOTTHEIM. We all had so much to talk about that the three hour class turned into six hours, every week, meaning I had to find a bus home at midnight. It was worth it! Never before had I experienced such an exquisite conversation around cinema and the metaphysical. I was enthralled.

Now all these years later, I have the unbelievable opportunity to talk to Larry about his life and art at @themuseumofmodernart as part of his May retrospective The Red Thread: Larry Gottheim’s Films.

MoMA / Larry Gottheim Short Films
Fri, May 23, 7:00 p.m.
Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd
Followed by a conversation with
Larry Gottheim and Lynne Sachs

“This career-spanning survey celebrates the work of avant-garde filmmaker Larry Gottheim, from his first film, ALA (1969), to his latest, A Private Room (2024). Renowned for his 1970 film Fog Line, Gottheim has continued to challenge notions of what it is to truly see and be present when viewing moving images; his work encourages deep meditation.”

This evening offers NYC audiences the chance to see four new Gottheim gems, recently completed short films that engage with found footage in such inventive and exhilarating ways.

Pls join us!

Gratitude to @filmcoop @francis.valente @arthouseathome

Link:
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/10529

May 5, 2025

On May 14, I will be back in San Francisco with my partner Mark Street @marklacalle for @canyoncinema ‘s “A Salon with Millennium Film Journal ” at @artiststelevisionaccess . For me, it will be a time to remember my former San Francisco Art Institute @sfai_legacy teacher and dear friend Gunvor Nelson. I wrote a remembrances of Gunvor and Narcisa Hirsch @filmoteca_narcisa_hirsch for the most recent issue of Millennium Film Journal @millennium_film_journal (excerpted here).

Dedication: A Salon with Millennium Film Journal
Wednesday, May 14, 2025 7:30pm (doors 7pm)
Artists’ Television Access
992 Valencia Street
San Francisco

I really look forward to seeing work by Gunvor and Steve Reinke @spreinke , @evagiolo , Vincent Grenier and Kevin Jerome Everson @trilobite . MFJ Editor Nicholas Gamso @gamzoid and Canyon Cinema’s ED @brett_kashmere will both be there. Together, we hope to create a celebration of artists in our community – those who have left and those who are with us.

“Gunvor Nelson was a profound presence in my life – a teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute first and then for decades a dear friend. Her films made you think about everything from the taste of a shiny green apple to the mortal coil. Whether using a light meter or working with the laboratory on the timing lights for a new film, Gunvor relished every aspect of her art, including the technology. I would sit with her for hours in front of a 16mm editing machine, knowing that I was learning from a brilliant, committed artist with the most lucid, precise advice.

Gunvor’s movies also made me think about being a woman in the most visceral ways. Here film “Schmeerguntz” (1965) captured the raw, messy ecstasy of being a mother, and her film “My Name is Oona” (1969) celebrated the fierce passion of her daughter Oona Nelson, inspiring me to shoot 16mm footage that spins, dances and, soars with my daughters Maya and Noa.”

Link to event and remembrances in bio. Gratitude to @oonanelson for your vision and love and to @stiftelsen.filmform for supporting Gunvor Nelson’s legacy.

April 28, 2025

Yesterday I presented the stunning documentary PORTRAIT OF JASON (1966) by Shirley Clarke at the @paristheaternyc as part @theacademy Museum Branch Selects. I invited Jack Waters @jaceogram – visual artist, film maker, writer, media artist, choreographer, performer and active member of the @filmcoop (which Clarke helped to found in the early 1960s) to join me to discuss his role as Jason in Stephen Winter’s “Jason and Shirley.”

Here Jack celebrates the preservation work on the film by Milestone Films drawing attention to the lack of visibility Clarke received during the heyday of the NEW AMERICAN CINEMA. He also explores how the film expresses the early ethos of queer liberation. Jack points to the brilliance of Clarke’s work but also asks if indeed Jason ever finds HIS voice in the film.

In 1995, my friend and fellow filmmaker Marlon Riggs – director of one of my favorite movies “Tongues Untied” – said in his film “Black Is…Black Ain’t”:

“How long, Jason, how long have they sung about the freedom and the righteousness and the beauty of the black man and ignored you. How long?”

February 2, 2025

I was very moved by this interview by @_marimerino in SARA Y ROSA: FILM CRITICISM & IBERO AMERICAN CINEMAS @sarayrosacine with film programmer @cintiagil9 . It is not often that we have access to the thinking of those people who curate for cinemas and festivals. Usually in the press, the emphasis is on the actors, the films, and the directors. Thanks to the rigorous thinking of film curators, this very special celebration becomes a lived experience that we share with others in a very particular configuration.

“This is why programming work is not only a selection work, but a work of constructing contexts, critical contexts, discursive contexts, contexts of connection between films. I have to look for these contexts myself, so how do I connect?”

As Gil makes so very clear, the bigger, fancier, more commercial space is not always ideal.

“So I think we have to recognize the different scales at which films can operate, can function, can live, and put money, strategy and thought into these different scales. It is like ecology: a forest does not only live with very big trees, it also needs smaller ones. Everything works in an ecological system.”

She also asks us to take a new look at the map of cinema, to de-emphasize the focus on affirmation from Europe as the center and to work harder to register our relationships to other languages and regions.

“We have to imagine a world where there are many centers. Latin American cinema also has the power to define centers.”

In Latin America, she explains, there is far more emphasis on film criticism, deep thinking around meaning, representations and invention.

“I think it’s beautiful how, for example, cinephilia in Latin America doesn’t just involve watching films, but also reading about films, something that is in decline in Europe.”

January 15, 2025

CRAIG BALDWIN, my dear friend, the genius found footage filmmaker, legendary impresario, creator and host of Other Cinema in San Francisco’s Mission District, film archivist, teacher, distributor and booster of all things at the margins of culture, is currently experiencing serious health challenges in his life!!

Since August 2024, Craig has been battling throat cancer. For the last four months, he has been in and out of hospitals and skilled nursing facilities being treated for the cancer and the challenging secondary effects from the radiation and chemotherapy. Needless to say, this has been physically devastating and Craig’s road to recovery is going to be long and slow. Before he can return home to his studio/archive and cinema, there will need to be therapies which will facilitate him being able to eat and walk again. This has been a huge financial blow for Craig.

Please contribute to our GoFundMe Campaign here: https://gofund.me/6156993d
Link also in bio.

We are sure that many of you recognize Craig as an exemplary citizen of the underground, experimental film and art community. For over 40 years, his generosity and selfless support for the margins of Cinema have guided and inspired our community. Many of you have personally experienced the “Baldwin Film Phenomenon” —from having seen his brilliant films, attended his mind-bending lectures on found cinema, taken classes or been mentored by him. Others have purchased archival film from him, spending hours in his underground studio winding through miles of 16mm film for your own projects. Perhaps you, like 1000s of others, have attended programs from his weekly film series or listened to him hold forth about art and cinema in a late night bar. We all know what a force of nature Craig is and how important it is that we return the support so he can recover his health and resume his work as an artist and his service to the community.