Screening
On Saturday, March 1st, at 6:30pm, join us at the FMC Screening Room (475 Park Avenue South, 6th Floor) to celebrate the release of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, Volume 65, Nos. 1&2, which chronicles the creative life of former FMC Executive Director, MM Serra.
MM Serra is an experimental filmmaker, curator, author, and educator. For over 30 years, Serra was the Executive Director of the Film-Makers' Cooperative, the oldest and largest archive of independent media in the world. Her first five films (Nightfall, 1984; Framed, 1984; NYC, 1985; PPI, 1986; Turner, 1987) were preserved and digitized by Anthology Film Archives' Preservation series Re-Visions: American Experimental Film 1975-1990. The series “spotlights…the generation of experimental film artists who emerged after the final formation in 1975 of AFA’s Essential Cinema repertory screening cycle.” Anthology describes Serra’s five films as having a "DIY Lower East Side spirit" that "introduces a distinctive lyrical eroticism.”
In 2015, Serra was awarded a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts for her film Enduring Ornament, and in 2016, she received a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts for a new film titled Mary Magdalene that was exhibited at the New York Media Center in August 2017. In 2018, Serra gave the 9th Annual Experimental Lecture at NYU Cinema Studies, entitled Art(Core): The Films of MM Serra, and in 2019, her lecture was published by Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media. Her films have screened at MoMA, Sundance, and the Tribeca Film Festival, among other prestigious venues.
An Evening with MM Serra celebrates the release of Volume 65, Nos. 1&2 of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, which chronicles Serra's creative life. This issue of Framework, titled "I Want to Ferret Out Diversity from the Collection, Its Underground, Its Outcasts, Its Explorers: A Festschrift for MM Serrra," explores Serra's long and prolific career as an experimental filmmaker, curator, and historian who ran the FMC for over three decades. The issue features contributions from such friends and peers as Drake Stutesman, Ronald Gregg, Lynne Sachs, Annie H. Berman, Peggy Ahwesh, Vera Dika, Kiki Loveday, Devon Narine-Singh, Ara Osterweil, Erica Schreiner, Marc Siegel, Chris Straayer, Juan Antonio Suárez, Joe Wakeman, Jack Waters, Peter Cramer, Seth Barry Watter, Josie Willems, and Ger Zielinski.
Program:
- NYC (MM Serra, 1985, 1 minute), introduced by Annie Berman
- Turner (MM Serra, 1987, 3 minutes), introduced by Annie Berman
- Mary Magdalene (MM Serra, 2017, 5 minutes), introduced by Lynne Sachs
- Jack Smith's Apartment (MM Serra, 1990, 8 minutes), introduced by Joe Wakeman
- Excerpt from "Experimental Women," presented by Erica Schreiner (5 minutes)
- Mary Magdaline (MM Serra, 1991, 30 minutes), introduced by Vera Dika
- Trick Film (Peggy Ahwesh, 1996, 6 minutes), introduced by Peggy Ahwesh
- Trailer for Endless Possibilities: Jack Waters and Peter Cramer (MM Serra, 2021, 2 minutes)
Total Run Time: 60 minutes.
The screening will be followed by a discussion and Q&A with Serra and Stutesman, as well as a presentation of Serra's slides Nudes Out of Context by Annie Berman.