The Film-Makers' Cooperative aka The New American Cinema Group is an artist-run, non-profit organization which was founded in 1962 in New York City by Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos,Lloyd Michael Williams and other filmmakers to distribute avant-garde films through a centralised archive.

The Film-Makers' Cooperative holds the world's largest collection of avantgarde and experimental films, with over 5,000 titles by more than 825 filmmakers. The collection includes work authored on 35mm, 16mm, 8mm, video and DVD. The Cooperative rents out the films in its collection to cinématheques, film festivals, schools, universities, museums, and other art institutions in the United States and around the world.

Based upon a belief common to the founding members that the 'official cinema is running out of breath' and has become 'morally corrupt, aesthetically obsolete, thematically superficial, temperamentally boring' (as the original 1962 manifestoHistory would have it), the Film-Makers' Cooperative was a key institution in the heyday of American experimental or 'underground' film in the 1960s and 1970s, and has continued to operate on a non-exclusive basis to ensure the existence of an alternative, non-commercial film culture since then.

Its non-exclusive principle of anti-censorship makes the Film-Makers' Cooperative open to anyone who wishes to become a member.

The New York Film-Makers' Cooperative has inspired similar initiatives both within the United States (Canyon Cinema in San Francisco) and abroad ( in England, in Canada, ABCinema in Denmark, and elsewhere).

Besides distributing its members' films, the Film-Makers' Cooperative is continuously involved in film preservation and DVD release projects, and in arranging screenings and events in and around New York City.

Motto: 'We don't want rosy films - we want them the color of blood' (first statement manifesto of the New American Cinema Group, September 30, 1962).

Executive Director: M.M. Serra

Artistic Director: Jonas Mekas

Members of the Board: Donna Cameron, Lili Chin, Bradley Eros, Michael A. Gitlin, Sharon Greytak, Rohesia Hamilton Metcalfe, Anne Hanavan, Marie Losier, John Mhiripiri, Bill Morrison, Lynne Sachs, Joel Schlemowitz, Jack Waters, Grahame Weinbren, Ghen Zando-Dennis

Contact data
{|
|valign='top'|Address
||The Film-Makers' Cooperative

c/o The Clocktower Gallery

108 Leonard Street, 13 floor

New York, NY 10013

USA
|-
|Webpage
||http://www.film-makerscoop.com
|-
|Email
||[email protected]
|-
|Telephone
||+1 212-267-5665
|-
|Fax
||+1 212-267-5666
|}

References