Series Site
“Developed and directed by Gerald O’Grady – scholar and founder of the legendary Center for Media Study at SUNY Buffalo in the early 1970s – the series, FILM-MAKERS, was broadcast on American public television channels from 1976-77 and geared to the independent and experimental film world. It helped to promote marginal artistic practices that were generally misunderstood by the public at large. O’Grady would talk with his guests, filmmakers and artists such as Stan Vanderbeek, Peter Kubelka, Paul Sharits, Robert Breer, and Jonas Mekas. [Today] FILM-MAKERS constitutes invaluable archival material for the history of independent and experimental cinema.” –CINÉMA DU RÉEL
“In l975, the regional media center, Media Study/Buffalo, which I had founded in 1973, entered into a cooperative project with our local public broadcasting station, WNED-Channel 17, to produce thirteen 30-minute segments of a program called FILM-MAKERS. At that time, no public television station was screening the films of what had become known as underground, experimental, art, independent, or personal cinema. The attempt was to explain to the widest possible audience how these new media worked. Channel 17 provided its audio equipment and cameras, the three cameramen, the Producer, the Director, and a Sound Recordist. The programs were unrehearsed and the filmmakers received $300 each for the rights to show their work. Within the next three years, the series was aired by more than 100 other public television stations in the U.S. Despite the relatively low ratings, these broadcasts reached an audience more than 100 times larger than that for all previous screenings of these works in regional centers, classrooms, museums, etc.” –Gerald O’Grady
Special thanks to Gerald O’Grady, and to Dr. Dorcas Müller (ZKM, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe).
Gerald O’Grady will be here in person to present each program!