CWNY is very proud to have been a part of some of the special screenings and panels presented by the Donnell Media Center over the years. These programs are always free and open to the public.

The Donnell Media Center is one of the largest of its kind in the nation, containing an important collection of over 5000 videotapes and 8,500 16mm films which include everything from independent experimental videos to documentaries to Hollywood films. Their Film Video Study Center, a vast and invaluable resource, is open to the public.*

We would like to thank Elizabeth McMahon of the NYPL for her ardent support and assistance with organizing these programs.

Donnell Media Center

of the New York Public Library 

20 West 53rd Street

New York, New York 10019

Filmmakers Pavitra Chalam, Joyce Chopra,

Liz Foley and Therese Schecter

at the CineWomen NY Donnell Media Center event

Feminism/Post Feminism on Film, March 2006

*The Donnell Media Center is presently being renovated.

Its holdings may now be found in various NYPL branches throughout the city.  For information please contact:

Children’s Collections

(including Winnie the Pooh and Friends)

Humanities and Social Sciences Library

42nd Street and Fifth Avenue

212.930-0830

Film, Video, Audio Collections

Donnell Media Center

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

40 Lincoln Center Plaza

212.870.1630

Documentary, World Cinema Video

and World Languages Collections

The Mid-Manhattan Library

455 Fifth Avenue

212.340.0833 

TTY: 212.340.0931

www.nypl.org

CineWomen NY

presents:

Rarely Screened Masterworks by Pioneering Women Filmmakers

in association with the

Donnell Media Center of the NYPL

March 6 and March 27, 2003

In honor of Women’s History Month, CWNY proudly co-sponsored two evening programs with the Donnell Media Center of the New York Public Library.

March 6 Program

CWNY introduced a sampling of rarely screened short films, which illustrates the history, breadth, and diversity of works independently produced by women.

Moderator:

Liz Foley

Filmmaker and CWNY board member

 Panelists:

Seminal filmmakers

Donna Cameron and Su Friedrich

- and -

legendary film scholar, filmmaker, and producer

Cecile Starr

The program included:

• Toilette by little-known and under-recognized animator Joan Freeman
• Bridges Go Round by Shirley Clark, a trailblazing figure in both American independent cinema and early video art
• Fauve by film artist Donna Cameron, who invented the unique paper-emulsion technique used in this film and whose work is found in the collections of MOMA and other institutions
• Notebook by Marie Menken, New York City painter, collage artist and filmmaker who has been described as one of the last “true bohemians” of the 1950’s and 60’s
• Wintergarden: Hudson River Diary by Storm De Hirsch, a cine-poet active during the 1960’s and 1970’s whose work has been honored in retrospectives at MOMA and the Whitney
• Gently Down the Stream by Su Friedrich, a New York-based filmmaker whose highly regarded and challenging work exemplifies the art of self-made independent film since the late 1970’s
• Spook Sport by Mary Ellen Bute, the first American to make abstract motion pictures, and the first person in the world to use electronic imagery in film. Her early work prefigures Disney's Fantasia

March 27 Program

The program showcased a classic film from the only woman director of the heyday of the Hollywood studio, Dorothy Arzner, directing one of the earliest talking pictures: The Wild Party starring Clara Bow and Frederic March.

*******

Donnell Media Center presents:

Pioneering Filmmakers

 a Women's History Month celebration +

March 4, 24 and 25, 2004

In an evening combining screenings with a panel discussion, CineWomen NY, New York Women in Film and Television, African-American Women in Cinema and Women Make Movies joined with Donnell Media Center of the New York Public Library to celebrate the work of pioneer filmmakers and organizations. Presented over three evenings, the program featured a rarely works from the Donnell catalogue, as well as newer, equally innovative, films.

A panel discussion, focusing on these outstanding films, their makers and these vital women’s film organizations, followed the screenings.

Elizabeth Foley, CWNY Board Member worked with Elizabeth McMahon, NYPL to put this great program together.

March 4 Program

Legendary film scholar, filmmaker, and producer Cecile Starr offered a master class chronicling the many accomplishments of courageous and innovative women filmmakers and animators - many of whom she has known personally - who have worked in and around New York City since the early 1900’s. The following films were screened and discussed: Matrimony’s Speed Limit (Alice Guy-Blaché, 1913); Dada (Mary Ellen Bute, 1936); The Cummington Story (Helen Gayson, 1945); In The Street (Helen Levitt, James Agee, and Janice Loeb, 1952); Alexeieff At The Pinboard (Claire Parker, 1960); Permanent Wave (Anita Thatcher, 1966); Tub Film(Mary Beams, 1973); and The Doodlers (Katy Rose, 1975).

March 24, 2005 Program

From NYWIFT: 

Unmasked (11 mins.) 1917 B&W 

Silent with prints. Two jewel thieves played by director/star Grace Cunard and her husband, Francis Ford (brother of John Ford), compete to steal the same necklace. The duo spar, outsmart one another and fall in love.

From WMM:

Dreams of Jagodina (29 mins)

A film which stirs primal memories and ignites smoldering passions by painting a haunting portrait of both suffering and healing. Vivid images reveal the memories and the projections of a young woman, Suzana Jeremic, who has grown up with domestic violence and is fiercely determined not to repeat her mother’s suffering.

From AAWC:

His/Herstory (20 mins.) A talented journalist reclaims her identity after her fanatically afrocentric husband decides to take on a second wife. His/Herstory weaves one woman’s journey of self discovery into a compelling yet humorous story of life choices.

Panelists:

Nora Malone

Nzinga Kadalie Kemp

Ina Archer

March 25 Program

From CWNY:

Anything You Want to Be

by Liane Brandon

From African-American Women in Cinema:

Rose’s Brew

by Jessica Ann Peavy

From NYWIFT Women’s Film Preservation Project

Color Rhapsody

by Mary Ellen Bute

From Women Make Movies

Confession

a new short directed by Marina Petroskaia.

Panelists:

Jennifer Wollan

Editor and board member of NYWIFT

Marta Sanchez

Women Make Movies

Amy Greenfield

Experimental filmmaker

Moderator:

Elizabeth Foley

Independent director/ producer and board member of CWNY.

+ On a related note, the following was presented at the

Donnell Media Center on

 March 11, 2004:

Camille Billops Screening

Award-winning artist and filmmaker Camille Billops screened and discussed excerpts from many of her films including Suzanne Suzanne (1982), Finding Christa (1991), Take Your Bags (2000), and String Of Pearls (2002). Using her family as the focus, Billops’ documentaries investigate and enlarge the tenuous nature of family dynamics.

Sculptor and filmmaker Camille Billops was born in Los Angeles. Her awards include a Huntington Hartford Foundation Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and The International Women’s Year Award, among many others. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Studio Museum of Harlem, Photographers Gallery, London, and The Museum of Drawers, Bern, Switzerland. With her husband James Hatch, Billops co-founded the Hatch-Billops Archives of Black American Cultural History, which resides in New York City. It contains a collection of visual materials, oral histories, and thousands of books chronicling black artists in the visual and performing arts.

Donnell Media Center

and CineWomen NY

present:

Feminism/Post Feminism on Film:

Is the Women’s Movement Still Necessary?

March 23, 2006

A film program and panel discussion in

honor of Women’s History Month

Panelists:

Therese Shechter

Director of I Was a Teenage Feminist

- and -

Joyce Chopra

Director of Smooth Talk

and many other films

Moderator: Liz Foley

Filmmaker, film professor and CWNY board member

Films shown included: Joyce at 34 by Joyce Chopra and Claudia Weill

Promotional co-sponsor BUST, provided free copies of its groundbreaking women’s lifestyle magazine to each attendee.

*******

abecedarium:NYC was introduced during 

Video and Digital Art by Women

Since the 1960s

a joint presentation by 

the Donnell Media Center and CineWomen NY in May, 2008. 

This panel was moderated by filmmaker and co-president of CineWomen NY Alison McMahan.  An historical overview of clips by artists such as Carolee Schneeman, Mary Lucier, Mako Idemitsu, Shigeku Kubota, Cheryl Donegan, and Max Almy was also presented by Ms. McMahan.  This event was organized by Elizabeth McMahon* of The New York Public Library.

Abecedarium NYC is an online exhibition sponsored by the New York Public Library which explores New York City through language and the moving image.  The Abecedarium NYC is interactive and is waiting for submissions of original video, photography and writing by artists like you! 

VISIT

Abecedarium NYC is an interactive online exhibition that reflects on the history, geography, and culture - both above and below ground - of New York City through 26 unusual words.  Using original video, animation, photography and sound, Abecedarium NYC constructs visual relationships between these select words and specific locations in the Bronx, Brooklyn , Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island.

EXPLORE

places: Each word - whether it's A for audile or Z for zenana – leads to a different short video and a location in the city that you may never have experienced before.  

In selenography (the study of the moon), amateur astronomers celebrate the wonders of the night sky at Staten Island's Great Kills State Park. In open city (a metropolis without defense), the ruins of military installations throughout the five boroughs decay with time. Chatty teenagers in a Flushing, Queens cafe drink bubble tea in xenogenesis (the phenomenon of children markedly different from their parents). In diglot (a bilingual person), a Chinese accountant, Albanian baker, Palestinian falafel maker, Argentine film archivist and Cuban cigar maker speak candidly about their daily routines. In mofette (an opening in the earth from which carbon monoxide escapes) mysterious gases flow from gaps in the streets of Manhattan.

people: A group of moving-image artists was invited to contribute their own visual interpretations of selected words, thus sharing their own unique perspective on the nature of language and urban life.  

In addition to creating a video, these artists reflect on their own work in the project blog and intimately share their perceptions and interpretations of the city in which they live. From listening to ringing church bells on a Sunday morning in Astoria, Queens to investigating the repercussions of the 1950 Standard Oil spill in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, each artist provides a unique vision that enriches the collective knowledge.  

Artists (in alphabetical order): Susan Agliata, Alisa Besher, Beth Botshon, Janine Fleri, David Gatten, Barbara Hammer, Heather Kramer, George Kuchar, Ethan Mass, Scott Nyerges, Lynne Sachs, Erik Schurink, Erika Yeomans.

context: To place the project within the context of the greater culture of the web, Abecedarium NYC utilizes the popular social networking tools of del.icio.us, Picasa, Facebook, Flickr, and the mapping tool Google Maps. Project participants can become a part of and contribute to the Abecedarium:NYC network of links, photos and resources related to the geography and culture of New York City. When you add Abecedarium:NYC to your own del.icio.us network, post the link to your Facebook profile, or join the Abecedarium:NYC photo network on Google's Picasa, you will become an integral part of the Abecedarium:NYC online community.  

The interactive content is also contextualized by a brief history of the artist abecedarium - from the Italian Futurist's edible alphabet to essayist Susan Sontag's alphabet of dance to avant-garde composer John Cage's alphabet radio poem. This narrative traces the rich history of the abecedarium as artistic outlet from the first seeds of language to the digital age, from physical objects to virtual worlds.

SHARE

The experience of visiting Abecedarium NYC is more than watching, listening and learning. Visitors to the project are invited to respond to existing content as well as to share their own experience of New York City by contributing original videos, soundscapes, photos or texts to the project blog. As more users contribute, the project grows in size, scope and experience, and transforms into a destination for sharing and learning about every facet of the city.  

The web 2.0 capabilities of Abecedarium:NYC allow for a new level of user sharing, interaction and tracking. Shoot a video and geotag it to the exact location it was shot, then track other users' comments on your work via RSS feed. Add your favorite post to Digg and subscribe to the project feed through Google Reader or My Yahoo!. Using del.icio.us, the project blog also provides links to related sites with a special focus on artist produced abecedarium projects.

Find the alphabet on the wings of butterflies, a plant alphabet created by the artist John Baldessari, an acrostic alphabet poem read by former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, as well as the history of the alphabet.

Susan Agliata* 

Co-Director: Abecedarium NYC

www.susanagliata.com

Susan Agliata experiments with diverse forms of the moving image in both physical and virtual space. Her professional and artistic interests include hypermedia practice and theory, information design, social networking structures, and collaborative technologies. Weaving together literature, history and personal journeys her films and web-based projects are multi-layered non-linear journeys through other places, mental, physical and temporal. In her spare time she collects 1964-65 New York World's Fair memorabilia as well as vestiges of old media. Susan holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College with a concentration in media studies.

Lynne Sachs

Co-director Abecedarium:NYC

www.lynnesachs.com

Lynne Sachs*' films, videos, installations and web projects explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences by weaving together poetry, collage, painting, politics and layered sound design. Since 1994, her five essay films have taken her to Vietnam, Bosnia, Israel and Germany -- sites affected by international war--where she tries to work in the space between a community's collective memory and her own subjective perceptions. Strongly committed to a dialogue between cinematic theory and practice, Lynne searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in her work with each and every new project.  Since 2006, she has collaborated with her partner Mark Street in a series of playful, mixed-media performance collaborations they call The XY Chromosome Project. In addition to her work with the moving image, Lynne is co-editing the upcoming Millennium Film Journal issue on experimental documentary. Supported by fellowships from the Rockefeller and Jerome Foundations and the New York State Council on the Arts, Lynne's films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Pacific Film Archive, the Sundance Film Festival and recently in a mini-retrospective at the Buenos Aires Film Festival.  She teaches experimental film and video at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.

Alison McMahan

Co-President, CinewomenNY

www.CinewomenNY.org

Alison McMahan*, Ph.D., is a documentary filmmaker and the President of Homunculus Productions, LLC, a company that producers training films, industrials and documentaries. Her most recent documentary Bare Hands and Wooden Limbs (2006) (www.BareHandsWoodenLimbs.com). She is currently in production on a feature length documentary, The Eight Faces Of Jane: The Life and Work of Jane Chambers (www.8FacesofJane.com). From 2001-2003 McMahan held a Mellon Fellowship in Visual Culture at Vassar College where she built a virtual reality environment with a biofeedback interface for CAVEs. From 1997 to 2001 she was an associate professor, teaching film history and theory and new media at the University of Amsterdam. McMahan is the author of the award-winning book Alice Guy Blaché, Lost Cinematic Visionary (Continuum 2002) (www.LostVisionary.com) and The Films Of Tim Burton: Animating Live Action In Hollywood (Continuum 2005) (www.FilmsOfTimBurton.com).

*member, CWNY