Film-Makers' Co-op at Fifty
July 16–31
National Gallery of Art
Fourth Street and Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20565

"We don't want rosy films—we want them the color of blood." Fifty years ago two dozen or so filmmakers—Jonas Mekas, Robert Breer, Shirley Clarke, Stan Vanderbeek, and Jack Smith among them—wrote the nine-point manifesto of the New American Cinema Group, a communal, collaborative organization founded on the principles of "self-sufficiency and free expression through the art of cinema." Acknowledging the force of other movements throughout the world, including Free Cinema in England and the nouvelle vague in France, they seized the moment and established the Film-Makers' Cooperative (incorporated as the New American Cinema Group Inc. on July 14, 1961). In so doing, they succeeded not only in forming their own collective, but they also influenced the formation of other independent, nonprofit, artist-run organizations around the world. This series of five programs celebrates the Co-op, now in its very active 50th year of financing, producing, distributing, screening, and supporting avant-garde cinema. Special thanks to executive director M. M. Serra and to the artists themselves.
 
Jonas Mekas: Personal Record
Filmmakers Jonas Mekas, Ken and Flo Jacobs, and M. M. Serra in person
Saturday, July 23, 4:30 p.m.

A mix of mostly 16 mm recent and historic short works, personally selected for this program by Jonas Mekas, includes Award Presentation to Andy Warhol (1964), a documentation of an event and an homage; a sequence of five rolls of film shot at a Ringling Bros. Circus, titled Notes on the Circus (1966); Cassis (1966), recorded at the summer home of Jerome Hill; Report from Millbrook (1966), filmed "on a weekend visit to Tim Leary's place"; the episodic works World Trade Center Haikus (2000) and Seven Days from 365 (2007); as well as the short, personal pieces The Song of Avila (1966) and Jacobses (2010). (Total running time approximately 75 minutes)