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Canyon Cinema, 60s Icon, Moves On
by Doniphan Blair
Hard at work at Canyon Cinema's new location in San Francisco's Bay View. photo: courtesy Canyon CInemaTHE BAY AREA HAS TWO MAJOR NET-
works, Netflix and YouTube, two major studios, Pixar and Lucasfilm, and two major universities, Berkeley and Stanford—all flush with cash—so why is maintaining the alt-film distributor Canyon Cinema, a standard bearer for an internationally-known, cinema scene and still a creative hotbed, so hard?
Started in 1961, in Bruce Baillie's house in the small redwood-ensconced town of Canyon, just over the hill from Oakland, hence the name, Canyon Cinema embodied a media explosion, if not a movement—since having no ideology WAS their ideology!
Found footage films, poetic perspectives and visionary visuals by the two Bruces, Conner as well as Baillie, the two Nelsons, Gunvor and Robert, the two Kuchars, George and Mike, Lawrence Jordan and James Broughton (father of Pauline Kael's daughter Gina) and others changed the face of filmmaking, along with filmmakers from across the country and the globe, also represented by Canyon.
Although their step-printing, pixilation and double exposure was adopted wholesale by music video and feature filmmakers, Canyon itself has teetered on the edge of insolvency for years and recently underwent a few big transitions.
In 2012, Canyon left its downtown digs south of Market for south San Francisco; they fired their Executive Director of 32 years, Dominic Angerame, also a filmmaker; and they reorganized under a new name, The Canyon Cinema Foundation, logo and bylaws.
Canyon logos: Old (lft) by well-known filmmaker-artist Bruce Conner lasted until 2012. images: courtesy Canyon CinemaThe new office looks great as does their website, which has expanded and includes Cinema Confessions, an excellent webzine. For a full history of the group, see CineSource's article.
"There is a huge irony in [this] field. There are dozens of PhD dissertations being written about '60s and '70s avant-garde film—[Hollis] Frampton, [Stan] Brakhage, whomever," I was told by Scott MacDonald, a current Canyon board member, who teaches and writes about film, including the novelistic but definitive "Canyon Cinema: Life and Times" (2008).
"It's an increasing part of an academic film program. [But] a lot of places have let 16mm projection lapse."
Even in academia, everyone relies on DVD or Youtube, which represents a small fraction of these artists' work and is often visually inferior. Considering the recent restorations of the film noir oeuvre, preservation is paramount.
"Canyon Cinema is taking a new tack under different leadership," I was told in an email from Canyon co-founder Bruce Baillie, who is still making films and recently did a stellar show at Oakland's Black Hole Cinemateque.
"The current director and staff are in my view excellent," Baillie continued. "CC Co-op will press on I think, surviving well into a differently colored future."
The current board consists of chairperson Maïa Cybelle Carpenter, a filmmaker, film teacher, startup advisor and founder of the Canyon Cinema Foundation and the new members: MacDonald, Peter Conheim, a player in the infamous Bay Area concept band, Negativland, as well as an audio and film curator; Rebecca Meyers, a filmmaker and curator; and Michael Renov, a USC School of Cinematic Arts professor, author and Sundance juror.
"It was a long time since they tried to get nonprofit," MacDonald said about the board's new goal, which eluded the previous director Angerame. "With [nonprofit status] they can apply for grants and they would be very likely to get them. I teach film at Hamilton College [in upstate New York], I don't know what I would do if Canyon closed."
"I have always been champion of Dominic [Angerame]. I did a book on Canyon and he—and the wonderful assistants and volunteers—is the hero of that book, implicitly," MacDonald said.
There was a time when alt-film was thought able to change the world, like at this festival in Copenhagen, 1992. images: courtesy Danish Film InstituteAngerame gave much of his life to Canyon. Although he was contracted to work only thirty hours a week, he told me that he was on call much more and travelled, fundraised and spoke extensively on behalf of the organization.
"Brother Dom's letter truthfully reveals the unfortunate, sudden dismissal of both himself and our friend Linda [Scobie, his assistant]," wrote Baillie in his email of June 21.
"At the time, we responded by reminding the new Board of Directors [that] this kind of behavior is a direct antithesis to CC's original, basic, unique founding principles."
In recent years, however, Angerame had developed a drinking problem, by his own admission, and instituted a policy of flextime, sometimes in the extreme, according to others.
Instead of entering into discussion or mediation, however, which could have included mandatory rehab or eventual resignation, as Angerame readily admitted to me, he claimed he was suddenly and summarily dismissed, with no two weeks notice or retirement package, a claim confirmed by co-workers but disputed by board members.
Angerame, who is 62 and lives in North Beach, writes of his experiences in "Adventures in Canyon Cinema Coop ", also published in this month's CineSource. In that screed, he claims he was the victim of a coup d'etat by an "art mafia", with all the trademarks of the cabals which often accrue in art institutions.
"I never got the sense from anyone—and I have been out there to visit about a month ago—that people don't like and admire what Dominic has done," MacDonald said. "It is just that if [he] continued, The board had come to feel that Canyon would fail."
"When I realized that Nick [Nathaniel] Dorsky, a great filmmaker who makes films only in 16mm, whose entire career as a filmmaker depends on Canyon, no longer felt that Canyon was safe in Dominic's hands, I had to trust that."
"The spring before all this happened, I decided to do a fundraiser," MacDonald confided. "I asked various people who use Canyon a lot to give $1000 as an access fee. I contacted 40-50 colleges and almost 20 responded positively. "
"I sent the list to Dominic in early July, for him to contact these folks and he told me he couldn't talk and would get back to me. I didn't hear from him again—and I believe that, as the weeks passed, a fair number of those who had agreed to pay the fee let the matter drop."
"I am sad for what happened to Dominic but my primary concern is about Canyon Cinema. As a college professor of film, I need Canyon to be functioning effectively, as it is now."
"This spring, I began another campaign, this time to ask for donations to the Canyon Cinema Foundation—but with the same goal: to keep this wonderful service alive. Hopefully, the response this time will be as positive as the last time."
"No one is getting rich out there. If you go there, you see two nice young women working their asses off trying to keep the place afloat." The Canyon staff, now headed up by Denah Johnston, a film teacher and researcher, didn't have time to get back to CineSource on their view of these issues.
But their website and newsletter indicate they have been amplifying and improving markedly of late, with extensive coverage of alternative film makers, shows and festivals. And they are now highlighting a new generation of artists, all crucial to attracting younger viewers.
"I hand out a strip of film at the beginning of class. They don't know what film is," MacDonald said.
Canyon's collection on DVD is still small. Brakhage, who was the most prolific with 400 to 500 films, has only 80 are on DVD and others, an even smaller percentage. When MacDonald shows Brakhage's "The Act of Seeing with Ones Own Eyes", he always rents the print because it is way better then the DVD.
Ironically, it was Angerame who suggested Canyon start to stream films, over the objections of some board members and Brakhage, who vehemently opposed digitization. Alas, Brakhage died in 2003, and Bruce Conner, a very influential Canyonite who designed the original logo, passed in 2008.
Certainly, all revolutions reach the moment when a new generation must take over. Despite negative feelings around Angerame's dismissal, and he remains a personae non grata, both in the office and on Canyon's rental roles, Canyon seems to be doing well.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jun 25, 2014 - 09:54 PM
by Doniphan Blair
Hard at work at Canyon Cinema's new location in San Francisco's Bay View. photo: courtesy Canyon CInemaworks, Netflix and YouTube, two major studios, Pixar and Lucasfilm, and two major universities, Berkeley and Stanford—all flush with cash—so why is maintaining the alt-film distributor Canyon Cinema, a standard bearer for an internationally-known, cinema scene and still a creative hotbed, so hard?
Started in 1961, in Bruce Baillie's house in the small redwood-ensconced town of Canyon, just over the hill from Oakland, hence the name, Canyon Cinema embodied a media explosion, if not a movement—since having no ideology WAS their ideology!
Found footage films, poetic perspectives and visionary visuals by the two Bruces, Conner as well as Baillie, the two Nelsons, Gunvor and Robert, the two Kuchars, George and Mike, Lawrence Jordan and James Broughton (father of Pauline Kael's daughter Gina) and others changed the face of filmmaking, along with filmmakers from across the country and the globe, also represented by Canyon.
Although their step-printing, pixilation and double exposure was adopted wholesale by music video and feature filmmakers, Canyon itself has teetered on the edge of insolvency for years and recently underwent a few big transitions.
In 2012, Canyon left its downtown digs south of Market for south San Francisco; they fired their Executive Director of 32 years, Dominic Angerame, also a filmmaker; and they reorganized under a new name, The Canyon Cinema Foundation, logo and bylaws.
Canyon logos: Old (lft) by well-known filmmaker-artist Bruce Conner lasted until 2012. images: courtesy Canyon Cinema"There is a huge irony in [this] field. There are dozens of PhD dissertations being written about '60s and '70s avant-garde film—[Hollis] Frampton, [Stan] Brakhage, whomever," I was told by Scott MacDonald, a current Canyon board member, who teaches and writes about film, including the novelistic but definitive "Canyon Cinema: Life and Times" (2008).
"It's an increasing part of an academic film program. [But] a lot of places have let 16mm projection lapse."
Even in academia, everyone relies on DVD or Youtube, which represents a small fraction of these artists' work and is often visually inferior. Considering the recent restorations of the film noir oeuvre, preservation is paramount.
"Canyon Cinema is taking a new tack under different leadership," I was told in an email from Canyon co-founder Bruce Baillie, who is still making films and recently did a stellar show at Oakland's Black Hole Cinemateque.
"The current director and staff are in my view excellent," Baillie continued. "CC Co-op will press on I think, surviving well into a differently colored future."
The current board consists of chairperson Maïa Cybelle Carpenter, a filmmaker, film teacher, startup advisor and founder of the Canyon Cinema Foundation and the new members: MacDonald, Peter Conheim, a player in the infamous Bay Area concept band, Negativland, as well as an audio and film curator; Rebecca Meyers, a filmmaker and curator; and Michael Renov, a USC School of Cinematic Arts professor, author and Sundance juror.
"It was a long time since they tried to get nonprofit," MacDonald said about the board's new goal, which eluded the previous director Angerame. "With [nonprofit status] they can apply for grants and they would be very likely to get them. I teach film at Hamilton College [in upstate New York], I don't know what I would do if Canyon closed."
"I have always been champion of Dominic [Angerame]. I did a book on Canyon and he—and the wonderful assistants and volunteers—is the hero of that book, implicitly," MacDonald said.
There was a time when alt-film was thought able to change the world, like at this festival in Copenhagen, 1992. images: courtesy Danish Film Institute"Brother Dom's letter truthfully reveals the unfortunate, sudden dismissal of both himself and our friend Linda [Scobie, his assistant]," wrote Baillie in his email of June 21.
"At the time, we responded by reminding the new Board of Directors [that] this kind of behavior is a direct antithesis to CC's original, basic, unique founding principles."
In recent years, however, Angerame had developed a drinking problem, by his own admission, and instituted a policy of flextime, sometimes in the extreme, according to others.
Instead of entering into discussion or mediation, however, which could have included mandatory rehab or eventual resignation, as Angerame readily admitted to me, he claimed he was suddenly and summarily dismissed, with no two weeks notice or retirement package, a claim confirmed by co-workers but disputed by board members.
Angerame, who is 62 and lives in North Beach, writes of his experiences in "Adventures in Canyon Cinema Coop ", also published in this month's CineSource. In that screed, he claims he was the victim of a coup d'etat by an "art mafia", with all the trademarks of the cabals which often accrue in art institutions.
"I never got the sense from anyone—and I have been out there to visit about a month ago—that people don't like and admire what Dominic has done," MacDonald said. "It is just that if [he] continued, The board had come to feel that Canyon would fail."
"When I realized that Nick [Nathaniel] Dorsky, a great filmmaker who makes films only in 16mm, whose entire career as a filmmaker depends on Canyon, no longer felt that Canyon was safe in Dominic's hands, I had to trust that."
"The spring before all this happened, I decided to do a fundraiser," MacDonald confided. "I asked various people who use Canyon a lot to give $1000 as an access fee. I contacted 40-50 colleges and almost 20 responded positively. "
"I sent the list to Dominic in early July, for him to contact these folks and he told me he couldn't talk and would get back to me. I didn't hear from him again—and I believe that, as the weeks passed, a fair number of those who had agreed to pay the fee let the matter drop."
"I am sad for what happened to Dominic but my primary concern is about Canyon Cinema. As a college professor of film, I need Canyon to be functioning effectively, as it is now."
"This spring, I began another campaign, this time to ask for donations to the Canyon Cinema Foundation—but with the same goal: to keep this wonderful service alive. Hopefully, the response this time will be as positive as the last time."
"No one is getting rich out there. If you go there, you see two nice young women working their asses off trying to keep the place afloat." The Canyon staff, now headed up by Denah Johnston, a film teacher and researcher, didn't have time to get back to CineSource on their view of these issues.
But their website and newsletter indicate they have been amplifying and improving markedly of late, with extensive coverage of alternative film makers, shows and festivals. And they are now highlighting a new generation of artists, all crucial to attracting younger viewers.
"I hand out a strip of film at the beginning of class. They don't know what film is," MacDonald said.
Canyon's collection on DVD is still small. Brakhage, who was the most prolific with 400 to 500 films, has only 80 are on DVD and others, an even smaller percentage. When MacDonald shows Brakhage's "The Act of Seeing with Ones Own Eyes", he always rents the print because it is way better then the DVD.
Ironically, it was Angerame who suggested Canyon start to stream films, over the objections of some board members and Brakhage, who vehemently opposed digitization. Alas, Brakhage died in 2003, and Bruce Conner, a very influential Canyonite who designed the original logo, passed in 2008.
Certainly, all revolutions reach the moment when a new generation must take over. Despite negative feelings around Angerame's dismissal, and he remains a personae non grata, both in the office and on Canyon's rental roles, Canyon seems to be doing well.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jun 25, 2014 - 09:54 PM
