Hi Mike, In undergrad at Queen's University in Kingston, I tried to do a small film salon with a couple other people in the film department (arty films at that point; I don't think they were experimental) but we were actually shut down by the Student Union(!), who had their own lucrative contract bringing in 35mm prints of latest blockbusters (Something about Mary and the like) and showing them in a large lecture hall on Friday or Saturday night (somehow our 20 seat classroom was a threat). The Film Department's blanket rights didn't cover us. My first introduction to film rights. Somehow other clubs got away with showing sci-fi and stuff.
When I went to grad school in San Francisco about 10 years later, I started the weekly SFAI Film Salon with Vanessa O'Neill to show experimental films. I had already been programming with Images Festival and Pleasure Dome and Vanessa had festival background from her Boston days, so we already had experience. We started the Film Salon as a reaction to an obvious lack in the school (and to take advantage of their great print library). I think we managed to get $1000 or two a semester (or year?) to rent prints and ran it for most of our two years there (starting, I believe, the middle of the first semester in 2006). It definitely had an impact on us and our future programming (Vanessa does the experimental program at the SF Film Festival now with Kathy Geritz and I do EMS & Free Screen back in Toronto. EMS was directly inspired by what Vanessa and I were able to do in SF). But I also have always seen it as a natural outgrowth of being an artist in this field--having to organize stuff in order to see it. There's a little online shrine here: http://theworldviewed.com/2011/the-sfai-film-salon-san-francisco/ The SFAI Film Salon lasted for a couple more years, programmed by friends in the next class down (Carling MacManus & Bamboo Hsu and a couple undergrads, I believe) who continued to show experimental stuff. I lost track of it after that, but the web shows that someone was at least programming it into 2013. best Chris Message: 4 Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 14:20:26 -0400 From: Michael Zryd <[email protected]> To: Experimental Film Discussion List <[email protected]> Subject: [Frameworks] Film/video programers/curators and campus film screenings Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Hi Frameworks: Im doing some research on what connections (if any) exist between people who program or curate film, video, and other moving image media and their experiences in college and university. Question: If you are currently programming or curating, did you get any experience at a college or university campus film society or screening series? I know of histories in Toronto at universities like Ryerson, University of Toronto, and York University, and have read anecdotal accounts from schools like Binghamton, NY, where students from those schools programmed ambitious experimental screenings on campus and then continued to program/curate afterwards, but Im wondering how widespread that connection is. And whether its a North American phenomenon or if it occurs elsewhere. Please share any stories or personal histories, either privately to me, or to the listserv. Thanks! Michael Zryd Associate Professor Department of Cinema & Media Arts School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design YORK UNIVERSITY York Lanes 230 4700 Keele Street Toronto ON Canada M3J 1P3 T 416.736.2100 x66957 / cell: 647-430-8680 / Skype: mjpzryd [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://ampd.yorku.ca/about-us/our-faculty/michael-zryd <http://finearts.yorku.ca/about-us/our-faculty/michael-zryd> ampd.yorku.ca <http://ampd.yorku.ca/> _______________________________________________ FrameWorks mailing list [email protected] https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
