CROSSROADS IN REVIEW
THANK YOU to everyone who participated in, supported and attended CROSSROADS 2014 last week! We are pleased and honored to report the festival was a success as filmmakers, enthusiasts and valued community members descended upon San Francisco to celebrate recent artist-made film, video and performance works. Our ongoing partnership with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts allowed us to open the festival with two sold out screenings of Nathaniel Dorsky: Three Premieres, whereupon we moved to our longstanding venue, the Victoria Theatre to present seven carefully curated programs featuring local, national and international makers, many in attendance! We are also grateful to have had the opportunity to partner with Kadist Art Foundation, who mounted a a stunning 3-channel, 3-room installation of Ben Rivers and Ben Russell’s A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (which followed Cinematheque’s screening of the film the previous night), and hosted an enlightening dialogue between Kadist Program Director Joseph del Pesco and filmmaker Ben Rivers. This installation is on view at Kadist through April 27. Highly recommended!
Just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, CROSSROADS’ success was further highlighted by noted theorist and critic Michael Sicinski in a follow-up essay published on Fandor’s Keyframe—“A Blistering Light at Crossroads Film Festival“—in which he proclaimed “it’s a beautiful thing to get your face blown off, aesthetically speaking.” Enormous thanks to Michael for such a thoughtful in-depth consideration of our burgeoning festival and Artistic Director Steve Polta’s curation and also attention paid to many works screened.
CINEMATHEQUE NEWS
A Warhol Curatorial Fellowship, a new Executive Director and more…
San Francisco Cinematheque is extremely proud to announce the appointment of Christine Metropoulos as its Executive Director (filling a position that has been vacant since the departure of previous ED Jonathan Marlow in 2011). A volunteer with Cinematheque since 1996, this appointment follows Christine’s service as Treasurer for Cinematheque’s Board of Directors (2012–13) and two-years active participation as Director of Cinematheque’s annual CROSSROADS film festival (“the backbone of the festival”—Steve Polta). A long-standing advocate and supporter of the local experimental/avant-garde media-arts communities, Christine has previously curated moving-image and music events for organizations across the Bay Area including Cinematheque, Artists’ Television Access, ATA’s Other Cinema, 7hz, Orbis Nex, and the Berkeley Art Museum. Additional formative experiences include her years as Program Coordinator at the Pacific Film Archive, and her participation as a programming associate at Craig Baldwin’s Other Cinema for 18 years. From 2012 to 2013 she also served as the editor of OtherZine, its online journal of contemporary and historic media culture. Christine joins Cinematheque’s Artistic Director/Archivist Steve Polta, who—on staff since 1998—has been Cinematheque’s sole staff member since 2011. This augmentation in staff (with the support of interns and volunteers) will allow Cinematheque to stabilize, grow and develop as a world-class venue advocating for the presence of artist-made cinema across the broader cultural landscape.
Cinematheque is equally proud to formally announce the late 2013 award to Artistic Director Steve Polta of a Curatorial Research Fellowship by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Provided in support of extensive research into the field of contemporary and historic “performance cinema” (including live cinema, paracinema and installation), this Fellowship will be followed by an ambitious large-scale series of performance cinema exhibitions and events to be presented in 2015–16.
Finally, Cinematheque is extremely please to welcome Kim Miskowicz on to its Board of Directors. A long time participant in the Bay Area’s film and art communities, artist/filmmaker Miskowicz joins the rest of Cinematheque’s Board—Mary Helena Clark (President), John Davis (Vice President), Kathleen Quillian (Secretary) and Gina Basso—to guide organizational development as Cinematheque moves into its exciting future…!