![Jonas Mekas](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Jonas_Mekas.jpg)
The Film-Makers' Cooperative a.k.a. legal name The New American Cinema Group, Inc. is an artist-run, non-profit organization incorporated in July 1961 in New York City by
Jonas Mekas
Jonas Mekas (; December 24, 1922 – January 23, 2019) was a Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, and artist who has been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema". Mekas' work has been exhibited in museums and at festivals worldwi ...
,
Shirley Clarke
Shirley Clarke (née Brimberg; October 2, 1919 – September 23, 1997) was an American filmmaker.
Life
Born Shirley Brimberg in New York City, she was the daughter of a Polish-immigrant father who made his fortune in manufacturing. Her mother w ...
,
Stan Brakhage
James Stanley Brakhage ( ; January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film.
Over the course of five decades, Brakhage created a large ...
,
Lionel Rogosin
Lionel Rogosin (January 22, 1924, New York City, New York – December 8, 2000, Los Angeles, California) was an independent American filmmaker.
Rogosin worked in political cinema, non-fiction partisan filmmaking and docufiction, influenced by I ...
,
Gregory Markopoulos
Gregory J. Markopoulos (March 12, 1928 – November 12, 1992) was an American experimental filmmaker.
Biography
Born in Toledo, Ohio in 1928 to Greek immigrant parents, Markopoulos began making 8 mm films at an early age. He attended USC Film Sc ...
,
Lloyd Michael Williams and other filmmakers for the distribution, education and exhibition of
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
films and alternative media.
History
In the fall of 1960,
Jonas Mekas
Jonas Mekas (; December 24, 1922 – January 23, 2019) was a Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, and artist who has been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema". Mekas' work has been exhibited in museums and at festivals worldwi ...
and Lewis Allen organized several meetings with independent filmmakers in New York City that culminated on September 28, 1960 with them officially declaring themselves the New American Cinema Group. Two days later on Sept. 30, Mekas presented the first draft of a manifesto for the Group, which included a call to form a cooperative distribution center.
On January 7, 1961, at a contentious meeting of the Group,
Amos Vogel Amos Vogel ( Vogelbaum; April 18, 1921 – April 24, 2012) was a New York City cineaste and curator.
Biography
Vogel was born in Vienna
en, Viennese
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attempted to stonewall the formation of the distribution center claiming that his own Cinema 16 organization should be the only distributor of experimental films. However, Vogel is shouted down after it was pointed out that Cinema 16 refused to distribute
Stan Brakhage
James Stanley Brakhage ( ; January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film.
Over the course of five decades, Brakhage created a large ...
's ''
Anticipation of the Night''.
The Film-Makers' Cooperative would officially start distributing films in 1962.
Description
The Film-Makers' Cooperative holds a large collection of
avantgarde and experimental films, with over 5,000 titles by more than 1,500 filmmakers and media artists.
[Rohter, Larry]
"Distributor of Avant-Garde Films Threatened With Eviction"
''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
.'' 10 Feb. 2009. The collection includes work authored on 35mm, 16mm, 8mm, video and DVD. The Cooperative rents out the films in its collection to cinématheques, film festivals, schools, universities, museums, and other art institutions in the United States and around the world.
Based upon a belief common to the founding members that the "official cinema is running out of breath" and has become "morally corrupt, aesthetically obsolete, thematically superficial, temperamentally boring" (as the original 1962 manifesto
[History](_blank)
would have it), the Film-Makers' Cooperative was a key institution in the heyday of American experimental or "underground" film in the 1960s and 1970s, and has continued to operate on a non-exclusive basis to ensure the existence of an alternative, non-commercial film culture since then.
The Film-Makers' Cooperative is open to anyone who wishes to become a member.
The New York Film-Makers' Cooperative has inspired similar initiatives both within the United States (
Canyon Cinema
Canyon Cinema is an American nonprofit organization for distributing independent, avant-garde, and artist-made films. After starting in the 1960s as an exhibition program, it grew to include a nationwide newsletter and a distribution cooperative. ...
in San Francisco) and abroad (
The London Film-Makers' Co-operative in England, and ABCinema in Denmark, and elsewhere).
Besides distributing its members' films, the Film-Makers' Cooperative is continuously involved in film preservation and DVD release projects, and in arranging screenings and events in and around New York City. In 2020, the Film-Maker's Cooperative expanded its distribution to online Video on Demand programs, including panels with the filmmakers such as Roberta Cantow.
Directors and Board Members
Founding Director:
Jonas Mekas
Jonas Mekas (; December 24, 1922 – January 23, 2019) was a Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, and artist who has been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema". Mekas' work has been exhibited in museums and at festivals worldwi ...
Executive Director: M.M. Serra
Members of the Board:
*Katherine Bauer - co-President
*Gregg Biermann - co-President
*Richard Sylvarnes - Vice President
*Joel Schlemowitz - Treasurer
*
Charles S. Cohen
Charles S. Cohen (born February 8, 1952) is an American real estate developer and film distributor.
Early life and education
Cohen was raised in a Jewish family in Harrison, New York. He is the son of Gloria and Sherman Cohen and nephew to Edd ...
*
Coleen Fitzgibbon
Coleen Fitzgibbon (born 1950) is an American experimental film artist associated with Collaborative Projects, Inc. (a.k.a. Colab). She worked under the pseudonym Colen Fitzgibbon between the years 1973-1980. Fitzgibbon currently resides on Ludlow ...
*Melissa Friedling
*Rachel Abernathy
*Amanda Katz
*
Bradley Eros
Bradley Eros (born in 1952 in Fairfield, Illinois) is an experimental film director, actor, curator, poet, and performance artist who also makes Musique concrète sound collages, music videos, photographs, live projection performances, works on pa ...
Advisory Board:
*Sebastian Mekas
*
Sara Driver
Sara Miller Driver (born December 15, 1955) is an American independent filmmaker and actress from Westfield, New Jersey. A participant in the independent film scene that flourished in lower Manhattan from the late 1970s through the 1990s, she gain ...
*
Jeffrey Deitch
Jeffrey Deitch (pronounced ''DIE-tch'';Mike Boehm (January 12, 2010)L.A.'s MOCA picks art dealer Jeffrey Deitch as director''Los Angeles Times''. born 1952) is an American art dealer and curator. He is best known for his gallery Deitch Projects ( ...
*
Ken & Flo Jacobs
*
Bill Morrison
*Rohesia Hamilton Metcalfe
*Jim Hubbard
*Jack Waters
*Peter Cramer
*
Lynne Sachs
Lynne Sachs (born 1961) is an American experimental filmmaker and poet living in Brooklyn, New York. Her moving image work ranges from documentaries, to essay films, to experimental shorts, to hybrid live performances. Working from a feminist pe ...
*
Peggy Ahwesh
Peggy Ahwesh (born 1954 in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania) is an American experimental filmmaker and video artist. She received her B.F.A. at Antioch College. A bricoleur who has created both narrative works and documentaries, some projects are script ...
References
External links
The New American Cinema Group / The Film-Makers’ Coop(official site)
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Film-Makers Cooperative, The
Experimental film festivals
Film organizations in the United States
Filmmaker cooperatives
Artist cooperatives in the United States
Jonas Mekas