From: Caroline Koebel (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Feb 11 2009 - 07:46:24 PST
Frameworkers: Best to read story online for accompanying Jonas Mekas
picture, etc., but in any case find it pasted below. Caroline
On 2/10/09 10:37 PM, "Rick Prelinger" <email suppressed> wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/movies/11coop.html?8dpc
February 11, 2009
Distributor of Avant-Garde Films Threatened With Eviction
By LARRY ROHTER
For nearly 50 years, the Film-Makersı Cooperative has been one of the main
guardians of American experimental cinema, championing the works of
directors like Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren.
But a real estate dispute has imperiled the future of the financially
troubled organization. Last month the Film-Makersı Cooperative received an
eviction notice that would force it out of its office and archive in a
building in TriBeCa, space that is controlled by the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art
Center, another bulwark of the cityıs avant-garde artistic establishment.
P.S. 1, which is based in Long Island City, Queens, and sponsors exhibitions
and provides artists with studio space, intends to give up the 8,200 square
feet on the 13th floor at 108 Leonard Street and turn it over to Alanna
Heiss, who founded P.S. 1 in 1971 and until her departure at the end of last
year was its executive director. Ms. Heiss, in turn, wants to use the
location as a base for her latest project, an Internet radio station called
Art International Radio.
³All we want is a corner,² said Jonas Mekas, the director and poet who is
one of the patriarchs of American avant-garde cinema. ³We canıt understand
why they are giving her so much space for a project that is just being
formed and has not proved itself of any service to the arts community, and
at the same time throwing out the only organization that independent
filmmakers have to distribute their work.²
Founded in 1962 by a group of experimental filmmakers that included Mr.
Mekas, the Film-Makersı Cooperative now holds a collection of about 5,000
titles made by some 900 artists. Most of the work is by Americans, but the
archive also includes some hard-to-find foreign works from periods as early
as 1920s Dada and German experimentalism. Directors of noncommercial
experimental films typically deposit copies of their work with the
cooperative, which then rents them to museums, universities, libraries and
galleries in the United States and abroad.
The organization also repairs and restores films made in formats ranging
from eight millimeter to video, and in some cases has the only known copy of
a work.
³We are a totally artist-owned and artist-run nonprofit institution,² said
M. M. Serra, the movie groupıs executive director. ³Our mission is to keep
the filmmakersı work visible.²
Several significant cultural institutions have written letters supporting
the cooperative, arguing that the cost of such a move would be financially
onerous to a nonprofit entity with a small budget and could also endanger
films in the collection. The New York Public Library, the American Film
Institute in Los Angeles, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the Fine
Arts Library at Harvard are among those who have issued statements of
support.
³The co-op set the model for artistsı control over distribution of their own
films, and continues to mean a tremendous amount to people working
completely outside the commercial system,² said P. Adams Sitney, author of
³Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943-2000² (Oxford University
Press) and a professor of visual arts at Princeton. ³They need space for all
those films, especially in this difficult economic environment. This
couldnıt be happening at a worse time.²
In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Ms. Heiss was reluctant to discuss the
dispute, though she said she was ³cautiously optimistic² that an agreement
could be reached. ³Some very productive discussion² would start on Tuesday
evening, she said.
But Ms. Heiss also seemed unwilling to accept an arrangement that would
allow the film cooperative to remain where it is. She said the Internet
radio station had ³enormously big plans² with ³new productions planned right
away² and needed the space ³so we can have people producing works of poetry,
music and theater² for broadcast on its newly revamped Web site
(artonair.org).
³I have enormous respect for the co-op, and we hope we can work together in
the future,² she added. ³When it moves, it should move very carefully.²
For many years the film cooperative operated out of an office on Lexington
Avenue at 31st Street, which it had to leave in 2000 because of
redevelopment. It then moved to the TriBeCa site, known as the Clocktower
Building, as part of an arrangement brokered by the Museum of Modern Art,
which is affiliated with P.S. 1.
The cooperative occupies about 900 square feet, paying a rent of about $1
per square foot, considerably below market rates. But it does not have a
formal sublease, only a month-to-month arrangement. Members of the
cooperative said that they had requested a sublease.
³As Art Radio is a spinoff of P.S. 1 and MoMA, they are trying to sever the
relationship they had with the Clocktower space,² Ms. Heiss said. ³Itıs not
romantic or exciting, and itıs not just my decision. The eviction by P.S. 1
is not intended to be anything other than procedural.²
Kim Mitchell, a spokeswoman for MoMA, said on Tuesday, ³P.S. 1 is
sympathetic to the needs of cultural organizations such as Art Radio and the
Film Co-op, and is confident that the two organizations will come to an
amicable resolution.²
The city, which owns the property, has thus far declined to intervene in the
dispute, on the grounds that there has been no violation of the lease.
³We have asked Art Radio to work with Film-Makersı Cooperative to come to a
resolution on the space,² said Kate D. Levin, the commissioner of cultural
affairs.
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