Experimental Curator is now Available for Purchase

Experimental Curator: The Sally Dixon Story is now available to purchase or rent through Documentary Educational Resources!

Experimental Curator: The Sally Dixon Story is a documentary that delves into the life of experimental film curator Sally Dixon. Sally is known as a trailblazer in the "film as art" movement and created the film program at The Carnegie Museum of Art in 1970. She founded the program with the purpose of "promoting a greater understanding and appreciation of film as an art form and the filmmaker as an artist." It was one of the first museum-based film programs in the country.

The film beautifully weaves in archival footage of Sally as her love of film first emerged, as well as archival footage of her collaborations with artists in Pittsburgh, and finally St. Paul. The documentary threads in contemporary footage of Sally, her family and her friends as they reflect on her enormous impact.

“She understood it very early and she promoted it, bringing attention to different poetic, non-narrative forms of cinema.” – Jonas Mekas, avant-garde filmmaker, co-founder of Anthology Film Archives

Subject areas:
Artist Profiles, Visual Arts & Media, Women StudiesSCREENINGS & AWARDS
Best Feature Documentary Film, Doc.Boston, USA
Honorable Mention, Experimental Forum, USA
Best Female Filmmaker, Lindsey UNA Film Festival, USA
World Festival Premiere, Ann Arbor Film Festival, USA
Athens International Film Festival, USA
Hot Springs International Women’s Film Festival, USA
Berlin International Art Film Festival, Germany
Cinefem 10, Uruguay
Stockholm City Film Festival, Sweden
Minneapolis/Saint Paul International Film Festival, USA
Toronto International Women Film Festival, Canada

To order for download or purchase: Visit the Documentary Education Resources Website.

EXPERIMENTAL CURATOR DEBUTS AT ANN ARBOR AND DROPS NEW MUSIC VIDEO!

FRESH TRACK FROM ARTISTS DUNIA & ARAM (GMO). 
From the soundtrack to the documentary the Experimental Curator: The Sally Dixon Story.
Music Video Shot by Matt Nagy (Origin Story), Bryan Litt, Michael Blain, Zan Gilles, Zahra Ahmed and Brigid Maher. Produced by Tiny Leaps Productions and West Rock Media. All rights reserved, 2022.

Experimental Curator is excited to have its WORLD FESTIVAL PREMIERE at Ann Arbor Film Festival on March 27, 2022 @1pm.  You can purchase a virtual pass/ticket for the screening here.
Read a recent review, "60TH ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL: DOCUMENTARY GIVES DUE TO AVANT-GARDE FILM PIONEER SALLY DIXON."  

Check out our New Resources on our Website! 
Over the upcoming months, we will be adding long format interviews and transcripts of the amazing artists/curators and supporting documentation to be used as an academic resource for researchers.  We have just added our first interview.  We are thrilled to showcase, Carolee Schneemann, who graciously granted us an interview in January 2019.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Now Available on Public Television, CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS!
Experimental Curator is now screening on public television in most markets during Women's History Month! Check your local public television listings for screenings dates and times!

Upcoming News
Experimental Curator to screen at 49th Annual Athens International Film + Video Festival on April 3 and 7th!
CHECK OUT THE FULL SCHEDULE HERE: http://athensfilmfest.org/2022-schedule/

West Rock Media, LLC produces and distributes film, video, and interactive media tools to highlight and address issues of identity and social change in order to foster critical thinking. The company began as Tiny Leaps Productions in 1996 and in 2021 expanded into West Rock Media, LLC.

Brigid Maher, West Rock Media, LLC
brigidamaher@gmail.com/202.674.0678

MARCH 2022 NEWS!

UPCOMING NEWS!
Experimental Curator, West Rock Media, to screen at 49th Annual Athens International Film + Video Festival
FILM NOW AVAILABLE ON PUBLIC TELEVISION, CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS! 

Athens, Ohio - April 1-7, 2022-- West Rock Media is excited to announce Experimental Curator: The Sally Dixon Story at the 49th Annual Athens International Film + Video Festival, renowned for supporting cinema from underground and marginalized populations. This year 2,200 films were submitted to the competition. From these; 235 films from 41 countries were chosen to screen at this year’s festival. The festival received over documentary centers on the life of Sally Dixon -- the woman who worked with some of the greatest experimental filmmakers of the late 20th-century. The documentary includes interviews and excerpts from Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Ken Jacobs, Carolee Schneemann, and many other filmmakers, scholars, and artists. Experimental Curator’s inclusion at the 49th Annual Athens International Film + Video Festival is a great success and further legitimizes Sally Dixon’s legacy as a hugely influential proponent of avant-garde filmmaking. Given the festival’s focus on experimental filmmaking, Sally’s story can finally be shared with the community she impacted most. This timely work is directed by Brigid Maher.

Experimental Curator is now screening on public television in most markets during Women's History Month! Check your local public television listings for screenings dates and times!

West Rock Media, LLC produces and distributes film, video, and interactive media tools to highlight and address issues of identity and social change in order to foster critical thinking. The company began as Tiny Leaps Productions in 1996 and in 2021 expanded into West Rock Media, LLC.

Brigid Maher, West Rock Media, LLC
brigidamaher@gmail.com/202.674.0678

April 2021 Update!

Dear Friends and Supporters of Sally!

Happy spring!  We have some exciting news to announce!  We are now at picture lock, that means the video portion of the documentary is complete.  The film is now getting a final sound mix completed and we will be ready to distribute the film in late April.  And, we’ll have more news on the upcoming film release!

This film is such a critical document capturing a major development in experimental film in the late 20th century and how Sally played a critical role in supporting those artists.  We need to get this film out to the public, not just to audiences who are already interested in experimental film but to a much wider audience.  This film also tells the story about how artists and Sally herself had to navigate the patriarchy of the time period to gain recognition and success. 

How Can You Help?

We still need financial support.  Brigid Maher is finishing the film on goodwill and personal savings.  But, we still need funds to pay for distribution insurance (known as errors and omissions insurance), film festival submissions which can be quite costly and to prepare the film for television broadcast.  All these costs still require that we reach our 10k fundraising mark.  We hope that you could send a donation pitch out to 2 to 3 friends who are not familiar with the documentary with our GoFundMe link (https://gofund.me/5cb3d4d8).  This will help us get to the financial finish line while also raising awareness about the film.  

We are preparing a marketing plan for the film.  We would like to submit it into film festivals, arrange for nationwide public television screenings and arrange a public tour of the film in museums (post-covid).  Do you know of a museum, theater or organization that would like to screen our film?  Please contact Brigid @ brigidamaher[at]gmail.com.

Thank you again for your incredible support!  More updates soon!

The Experimental Curator Team

New Year: New Edit

We are excited to bring in the new year with an update on our documentary: we have just completed our fine cut! We are now in the stage of our filmmaking where we have woven in all the footage that you will soon be viewing. It was exciting to include footage such as a tour of the Film Section under construction, personal films from filmmakers’ visits to Sally’s home, and photographs from Sally’s lively office at CMoA, because all this visual material enriches the stories Sally’s loved ones tell. 

In our exploration of the many places Sally took her career, we do not shy away from challenges she faced in a male-dominated field. She may have blazed trails for a revolutionary art form, but experimental film was still limited by traditional forces such as gender discrimination. Carolee Schneemann recalls the “wall of men” dominating and gatekeeping experimental film in the 1970s. It came as no surprise to learn from Carolee that Sally championed films such as Fuses when the CMoA board of directors and established experimental filmmakers would not. Sally also found herself professionally limited by gender discrimniation. Despite having to leave the department she founded, what she described as “the richest years of her career,” Sally was not finished making her mark on experimental film. In fact, her arrival in Minneapolis was highly anticipated by art institutions interested in expanding their film collections.

We are excited for you to join us as we follow Sally’s life and career from Pittsburgh to Boulder and Minneapolis. 

Until our next update,

The Experimental Curator Team

Rough Cut Alert!

We are delighted to share that our intrepid director and editor have just finished a rough cut of Experimental Curator: The Sally Dixon Curator. This rough cut is primarily made up of interviews, and yet even without much archival footage a strong message emerges: Sally Dixon was a leader who guided her collaborators into a new world and encouraged audiences to stop and watch. The “fire in her belly,” as Jean Tarbox calls it, was to make film an accessible art form for artists for whom film was an expensive medium and exhibition opportunities were scarce. She also sought to make experimental film accessible to viewers. Realizing that the “movies” she screens don’t quite look like movies, she prefaces a screening of "Dog Star Man" at the Carnegie Museum of Art with the following advice: 

“Many of you may not have seen this kind of film. It’s not a movie in the Hollywood sense, or in the narrative, sequential sense. If you could just hang free on it, and not expect meaning to come out in order, or in sequence. Much in the way you listen to a piece of music, just let it happen...and the meaning emerge(s) when it’s ready.”  

Sally may have come from a different background than the filmmakers she advocated for, but her call for viewers to “hang free” illuminates a revolutionary spirit not unlike these artists.  Zander Dixon remembers that his mother “often said that she wanted to ride the wave of the whole thing.” In fact, we think she broke the waves, and we are happy to ride in her wake.

Before you go, please check out these quotes from our rough cut that we’re continuing to think about: 

“Sally was so present and focused and warm and identified with the filmmakers and their work in a completely devotional way” (Carolee Schneemann)

“There was a need -- the need that filmmakers wanted to see those films, and  I wanted to see those films, and many others wanted to see, and filmmakers wanted that people would see them. And nobody wanted to show them because they were not Hollywood movies. Sally, she understood that very early.” (Jonas Mekas)

‘Sally was leader of the neighborhood. She would organize things and we would all follow her...They had somehow gathered around her. I think she was just born that way. She had the imagination and would let it run.” (Fred Foy Jr)

Stay tuned for another piece about our post-production! We’ll be interviewing our editor, Laura Madalinski.

Until then,

The Experimental Curator Team

June 2019 Update!

As we build a more complete picture of Sally Dixon’s role in supporting the growth of avant-garde/experimental film and film as art, there have been many new interviews and places we have travelled in 2019.
 
In January, we interviewed the inspirational filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist, Carolee Schneemann. She and Sally adored each other, and we are grateful to have had a chance to sit down with her before she passed away. We have an excerpt of the amazing interview on YouTube!

In February, we travelled to New York for the Sally Dixon panel at the CAA Advancing Art & Design conference. We heard presentations from film experts Benjamin Ogrodnik, Melissa Ragon, Lindsay Mattock, and Emily Davis, and interviewed them about Sally’s impact in the film world.
 
Also, in February, Sally celebrated her 87th birthday. She was surrounded my many loving friends and family. Her son Zander, who is a chef, made her the special almond cake she loved from a Pittsburgh bakery that she frequented when she lived in Pittsburgh and when she worked at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Even though she is still a bright shining light to those who get to be in her presence, Sally’s health continues to be affected by Alzheimer’s. You can read about how she’s doing here: https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/sallydixon32
 
In March, we had a delightful interview with filmmaker Ken Jacobs in New York. We were so grateful to meet Ken and Flo and talk about experimental film and Sally's vast contributions! 

In May, we were fortunate to have a personal look into Sally’s life when she lived in Colorado when we interviewed Jane Wodening, the former wife of famed filmmaker Stan Brakhage. Stan and Sally were big fans of one another. He hoped that one day they could all live near each other, and that did happen after she left Carnegie Museum of Art in 1975. Their relationship will definitely feature in our documentary.
 
The film project has grown after having interviewed so many amazing filmmakers with whom Sally was connected. The film features Sally and at the same time it is taking on the quality of a nod to so many profound filmmakers with whom Sally interacted. That is the very essence of Sally — to highlight others — and that is exactly what she did throughout her career as one of the first female film curators and as an arts administrator!
 
We are excited to announce that we will be handing the film over to the editor next week to begin final work on the film!  Since the length of the film will be longer than initially thought we have to raise more funds to complete the project. The fundraiser in autumn of 2018 was successful. However, we have incurred more travel and production costs in an effort to create a more complete picture of Sally’s contributions.

We are actively applying for grants, however if you would like to support this wonderful film you can send a check payable to American University (please add "Sally Dixon" in the Check Memo line) and send it to Brigid Maher, School of Communication, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave., Washington DC 20016. All donations are 100% tax-deductible.  We are very grateful for your support!
  
Thank you for following the Sally Dixon story as it unfolds and we mine beautiful gems about a woman who was pivotal in the avant-garde/experimental film movement. We are grateful to bring her significant legacy to life!

Sending Love and Light!

Sincerely, The Sally Dixon Film Team