Theo Thiesmeier Films 1983 - 1995
In the presence of the artist.

Theo Thiesmeier was born in 1962 in Bochum, Germany. He studied film at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, M. between 1983-89 with Peter Kubelka and four semesters of photography with Herbert Schwöbel. He completed his film studies in 1990 at the Cooper Union in New York with Robert Breer and P. Adams Sitney while working at Anthology Film Archives with Jonas Mekas. In 1997 he founded in Berlin, together with Ute Aurand and Renate Sami, the filmSamstag, later joined by Milena Gierke, Johannes Beringer, Bärbel Freund and Karl Heil until 2007.

In the mid 1960s, Edward Owens was an African-American teenager attending the Art Institute of Chicago when Gregory Markopoulos arrived to found the school’s film program. Owens, who was then studying painting and sculpture, had already been making 8mm movies for a few years; impressed by the maturity of his work, Markopoulos encouraged him to move to New York. Owens arrived in Manhattan in 1966 with Markopoulos, who quickly ushered him into the world of the city’s cultured demimonde, introducing him to figures like Andy Warhol, Gerard Malanga, Marie Menken, Gregory Battcock, and filmmaker-poet Charles Boultenhouse. Soon, Owens became romantically involved with Boultenhouse, and moved into the West Village apartment where Boultenhouse already lived with his lover of many decades, the legendary critic Parker Tyler, who accepted the arrangement.

Josephine Massarella is an independent filmmaker based in Hamilton. Her award winning shorts have screened world-wide. Her previous films include No End; Light Study; Night Stream; Green Dream; Interference; No5 Reversal; and One Woman Waiting. She is working on her latest 16mm film, Untitled. Josephine has a Master of Arts – Integrated Studies in Cultural Studies from Athabasca University, a graduate certificate in Advanced Film and Television from Sheridan College, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in film at the University of British Columbia. Josephine also teaches cinema studies.

Louis Hock was born in Los Angeles in 1948 and raised in Nogales and Tucson, Arizona. He began making films when he was studying psychology and poetry at the University of Arizona, graduating with a BA in Psychology in 1970. In 1973 he received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He joined the University of California, San Diego in 1977 and works as a professor the Visual Arts Department.