Screening
Join us at the Film-Makers' Cooperative (475 Park Avenue South, 6th Floor) on WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16th, at 7pm, for a second evening of screenings and reminiscences celebrating the career of the Coop's former 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 (NYC, 1985; Nightfall, 1984; Framed, 1984; 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 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: Part II continues our celebration, that began on March 1st, of 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.
The celebration will include a selection of Serra's films, with introductions and reminiscences from her friends and Framework contributors.
Program:
- Introduction by Annie Berman
- Darling International (1998), 22 minutes, co-directed by Jennifer Reeves. Introduction by Chris Straayer.
- Mary Magdalene (1991), 30 minutes, introduced by Vera Dika.
- Love Objects (1971), 16 minutes, directed by Tom Chomont. Introduced by MM Serra.
- Chop-Off (2008), 6 minutes.
- Teacher's Pet (1997) by Peggy Ahwesh, featuring MM Serra.
- Nudes Out of Context slides presentation by MM Serra and Annie Berman