Ed Emshwiller
Also Known As: not available
Biography: Born in 1925, Ed Emshwiller studied graphic design at the University of Michigan and L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. By the late '60s Emshwiller was working as a science fiction illustrator, and had established his place in the American avant-garde cinema with such works as Relativity (1966) and Image, Flesh and Voice (1969). His early films featured collaborations with dancers and choreographers—a theme he carried over into his videoworks. As both an artist and a teacher, Emshwiller’s pioneering efforts to develop an alternative technological language in video were enormously influential. His early experiments with synthesizers and computers included the electronic rendering of three-dimensional space, the interplay of illusion and reality, and manipulations of time, movement, and scale that explore the relationship between "external reality and subjective feelings." Emshwiller was among the first artists-in-residence at the TV Lab at WNET, where he produced the groundbreaking Scape-mates (1972). Sunstone (1979) was made over a period of eight months at the New York Institute of Technology. Emshwiller passed away in 1990 and an extensive collection of his work is housed by Anthology Film Archives.
Department: Directing
Place of Birth: Lansing, Michigan
Adult: No
Birthday: February 16, 1925
Age: 100 years old
Gender: Male
Deathday: July 27, 1990
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Home Movies 1971-81

Overview: Home movies shot on Super 8mm by W+B Hein over 10 years.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: xx
Release Date: 1985-01-01
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Galaxie

Overview: In March and April of 1966, Markopoulos created this filmic portrait of writers and artists from his New York circle, including Parker Tyler, W. H. Auden, Jasper Johns, Susan Sontag, Storm De Hirsch, Jonas Mekas, Allen Ginsberg, and George and Mike Kuchar, most observed in their homes or studios. Filmed in vibrant color, Galaxie pulses with life. It is a masterpiece of in-camera composition and editing, and stands as a vibrant response to Andy Warhol's contemporary Screen Tests. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1966-09-03
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Hallelujah the Hills

Overview: Jack and Leo vie for the affections of Vera – who appears a little differently to each man – over the course of a series of energetic sketches, flashbacks and homages.
Genres: Romance Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1963-12-16
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Family Focus

Overview: Emshwiller terms Family Focus a "family self-portrait, a stylized autobiography," which takes the form of an intimate collage of home movies, black-and-white videotape and photographs that have been colorized, synthesized or otherwise visually transformed in an electronic mediation by the artist. The viewer is witness to the spontaneous activities and conversations of the family's quotidian home life, which is accompanied by Carol Emshwiller's ironic, often poetic commentary. In one sequence of home movies, the children are seen "growing" over a span of twenty years. Using the video camera as a kind of psychological mirror, Emshwiller integrates video's intimacy, reflexivity and realism with its "unreal" technological manipulations to form what the artist describes as a "documentary/video art transformation of self-revealing images."
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1976-05-05
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Lost, Lost, Lost

Overview: Jonas Mekas adjusts to a life in exile in New York in his autobiographical film, shot between 1949 and 1963.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1976-09-14
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Diaries, Notes, and Sketches

Overview: An epic portrait of the New York avant-garde art scene of the 60s.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2013-11-23
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Painters Painting

Overview: Painters Painting: The New York Art Scene 1940-1970 is a 1972 documentary directed by Emile de Antonio. It covers American art movements from abstract expressionism to pop art through conversations with artists in their studios. Artists appearing in the film include Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella, Barnett Newman, Hans Hofmann, Jules Olitski, Philip Pavia, Larry Poons, Robert Motherwell, and Kenneth Noland.
Genres: Documentary History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1973-03-19
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Birth of a Nation

Overview: Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1997-08-06
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Solstice and Solyanka

Overview: Super 8 film. Observations of the Institute on Film, Video & Photography, Amherst, MA, summer 1975. Among the cast of characters, in order of appearance, are Robert Breer, John Terry, Steve Ascher, Richard Leacock, Jon Rubin, Frank Daniel, Ed Emshwiller, Ann McIntosh, Terry Lockhart, Standish Lawder, Jerome Liebling.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1975-01-04
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