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Locating the microcinema: Echo Park Film Center, Light Industry, and Other Cinema

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Locating the microcinema: Echo Park Film Center, Light Industry, and Other Cinema

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LOCATING THE MICROCINEMA
ECHO PARK FILM CENTER, LIGHT INDUSTRY, AND OTHER CINEMA

Santiago Vernetti

This thesis is presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
ART AND CURATORIAL PRACTICES IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Copyright 2013 Santiago Vernetti

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements i
Abstract ii
List of Figures iii
Introduction 1
Chapter One: Microcinema Precedents 6
Chapter Two: Spaces: Storefronts and Interiors 9
Chapter Three: Programming 22
Chapter Four: Conclusion: A Reconsideration of Infinite Cinema 28
Appendix 35

i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my committee members: faculty members Rhea
Anastas, Noura Wedell, Suzanne Hudson, and Karin Higa. This thesis would not have been
possible without their encouragement, expertise, and much needed criticisms.

Also, to my family and friends, without whose support this work would have never been
realized.

Lastly, I am eternally indebted to my colleagues: those in the M.A. Art and Curatorial Practices
in the Public Sphere program, all the Master of Fine Arts student enrolled during my time at
Roski, the many Bachelor of Fine Art and Bachelor of Arts students I had the honor of getting to
know, and all the faculty and staff that have helped me through this rigorous time. Your work
lends meaning to mine.

ii

ABSTRACT
The term microcinema has emerged over the last decade in scholarship of film and film
culture, journalism, and organization mission statements. This thesis explores three
microcinemas as case studies: Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles, CA; Other Cinema in San
Francisco, CA; and Light Industry in Brooklyn, NY in order to approach an understanding of
microcinemas as small-scale revisionist responses to the norms of movie theaters and screenings
in film and art worlds. The microcinema is a contextually responsive critical space that must
also be understood as a product of its locality.
I consider the microcinema in relation to historical precedents, specifically the early years
of Canyon Cinema. Secondly, each of the microcinemas is described in terms of their physical
characteristics, their organizational models, and their programming. Lastly, I turn to Hollis
Frampton’s notion of Infinite Cinema as a unique source with which to expand ideas and
characterizations of the microcinema. This study argues for the microcinema as a small-scale
institution that functions as a necessary site for the activation and preservation of marginalized
forms of cultural production and their related distribution networks.

iii

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Echo Park Film Center storefront, 2011. 35

Figure 2: Echo Park Film Center screening room. 35
“A Place on Earth” screening August 18, 2012.

Figure 3: Echo Park Film Center screening room. 36
KPFK Outreach Committee Presents “Even the Rain:
La Lluvia Tambien” October 19, 2012.

Figure 4: Echo Park Film Center directors Paolo Davanzo 36
and Lisa Marr alongside the Echo Park Filmmobile, 2012.

Figure 5: Light Industry storefront, January 2013. 37

Figure 6: Light Industry storefront, January 2013. 38

Figure 7: Light Industry storefront, January 2013. 38

Figure 8: Light Industry screening room, January 2013. 39

Figure 9: Light Industry lounge behind screening room 39
and equipment area, January 2013.

Figure 10: Artists Television Access Gallery storefront, 2012. 40

Figure 11: Other Cinema “Mapping Margins” screening 40
November 24, 2012.

Figure 12: Other Cinema “Mapping Margins” screening. 41
View from projection booth, November 24, 2012.

Figure 13: Other Cinema “Mapping Margins” screening. 41
Cashier and leaflet table November 24, 2012.

Figure 14: Other Cinema “Mapping Margins” screening. 42
Concession corner and Other Cinema banner. November
24, 2012.

Figure 15: Other Cinema “Mapping Margins” screening. 43
Craig Baldwin in the projection booth organizing the
night’s programming list on November 24, 2012.

Figure 16: Other Cinema “Mapping Margins” screening. 44
View of projection booth and Craig Baldwin organizing
the night’s programming list on November 24, 2012.

1

INTRODUCTION
The term “microcinema” was coined in the early 1990s by San Francisco curators David
Sherman and Rebecca Barton.
1
Their project - Total Mobile Home Microcinema - was capable
of seating thirty in a basement space underneath Barton’s apartment, and the term has since been
used to describe venues and organizations, both private and nonprofit, that of a similar scale.
Three currently operating microcinemas will serve as my main objects of study in this thesis:
The Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles (founded by Paolo Davanzo in 2002), Light Industry
in New York City (founded by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter in 2008), and Other Cinema in San
Francisco (founded by Craig Baldwin). This thesis centers primarily on these three North
American microcinemas, but in doing so also considers historical and contemporary analogues
(specifically the early years of Canyon Cinema). The term’s origin of meaning has largely to do
with the size and scope of the Total Mobile Home Microcinema. In an interview in 2007 Craig
Baldwin commented on the term and its creditors, “‘Their whole deal was so quintessential
microcinema, because it was a tiny little, sort of easement below their house,’ Baldwin says
laughing. ‘It was only about ten feet wide, and people sat on benches that held only two to a
bench. So you could have ten benches on one side and ten benches on the other side.’”
2
My
thesis aims to argue for an understanding of microcinemas beyond their small-scale and to
characterize these screening venues as fundamentally critical spaces. By critical I mean spaces
that function as sites that revise the forms of culturally dominant cinematic space (like
commercial franchise multiplexes or cable television networks) and also provide a space for
works that engage audiences on a critical level - through their content or form - that exists
outside the conventional modes of commercially dominant cinematic forms.

1
Kyle Conway. Small Media, Global Media: Kino and the Microcinema Movement. (Journal of Film
and Video Fall-Winter 2008), 61
2
Rebecca M Alvin. Cinemas of the Future. Cineaste Vol. 32. No 3 (Summer 2007), 1
2

In order to consider the microcinema as a kind of critical cinema we need to begin with
the word cinema.
3
What is meant by cinema is a reference to works of moving image art that are
categorically cinematic: A piece of cinema, a body of cinema; independent cinema, experimental
cinema, and for those metahistorians among us, even an infinite cinema.
4
A celluloid film reel in
a metal can is simply a collection of images coiled together in a sequence. That reel can only
become a cinematic experience when it is animated through a projector whose intermittent
motion provides the illusion of movement to the human eye.
5
What I mean to say is that the
categorization of a work of cinema is dependent on what constitutes the greater context of the
cinema. The cinema is (usually) the result of a medium that is projected in a space equipped
with the proper physical characteristics and technological apparatuses necessary. Moreover, and
perhaps equally important to remember, is that this activation is (usually) the result of exhibitors
who are responsible for producing the experience, and audiences who are on the ultimate
receiving end of the experience. Cinema then, is at once the work exhibited and also the entire
phenomenological makeup of the exhibition moment. In this study the word cinema will refer to
this more inclusive definition, regarding it as a space, a structure, an event, and a social
phenomena.

3
There is a rich history of theorizing what constitutes cinema and cinema studies. From Sergei Eisenstein
early writings from the late 19
th
and early 20
th
centuries to formative publications like Cahiers Du Cinéma
(in operation since the early 50s) founded by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie
Lo Duca. For a recent survey on works and artistic practices that expand the notion of cinema in relation
to the art world I suggest Tate Gallery Publishing’s Expanded Cinema : Art, Performance, Film (2011)
edited by A.L. Rees which is not coincidentally titled after Gene Youngblood’s seminal text Expanded
Cinema (1970).
4
See Hollis Frampton’s For A Metahistory of film: Commonplace Notes and Hypotheses (Artforum
September 1971). Reprinted in Jenkins, Bruce. On the Camera Arts and Coneccutive Matters (MIT Press
2009), 135

5
See Ascher, Steven, and Edward Pincus. The Filmmaker's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for the
Digital Age. (New York: Plume, 1999)
3

The emergence of the term microcinema in recent scholarship has produced an ostensive
definition at best. By privileging specific examples, and subjecting them to close scrutiny, it is
possible to expand upon the meaning of the term microcinema whilst avoiding a pigeonholed
definition. This thesis suggests that the microcinema is locatable, and that its location is
dependent on the recognition of a progressive and productive localism at play, or a contextual
responsiveness that makes microcinemas unique spaces that are in dialogue with a local
environment or community. The greatest similarity between the microcinemas of this study is an
observable contextual responsiveness that allows for individualization within a larger
sympathetic network - difference that allows for autonomy within a larger collaborative system.
The typology I am proposing highlights the defining traits of the three case studies with
respect to the microcinema’s criticality. The Echo Park Film Center focuses on preservation and
pedagogy. Their pedagogical initiatives are performed through community outreach as well as
empowerment (film workshops and after school programs addressed in Chapter Two) and
connection to various cinematic networks and festivals operating with a belief in cinema as a
vehicle for social justice. Their preservation initiatives take the form on various activating
archives through their programming, but also in the creation of their own archives and support of
outmoded forms of making through a classes, an equipment rental system, a sales counter, and
other services like film digitization and editing suites. Light industry focuses on screening rarely
seen content through rentals via archives similar to those used by EPFC. They also seek to
provide direct connections between audiences and makers by programming lectures by critics
and historians to accompany works and also find offer invitations to living artists to participate in
Q&As or introductions. Like Light Industry, Other Cinema focuses on activation and
preservation by inviting artists to participate in the exhibition of their works and by renting from
4

relevant archives. Other cinema also functions critically by framing works within larger series
meant to encourage dialogue or the creation of meaning through inclusion and relation of works
with each other or under a larger thematic. Moreover, by positioning itself in the vibrant
nightlife neighborhood - the Mission District - Other Cinema emphasizes the social aspect of
cinema and its potential in activating new publics and drawing crowds in off-the-street.
The method of my analysis is comparative and intertextual, and utilizes the early days of
Canyon Cinema as a kind of historical precedent and springboard from which to better
understand the three contemporary microcinemas outlined in this paper. The analysis itself is
twofold, examining both the physical spaces and programming of each during their respective
2012 screening seasons. Arguing for an understanding of microcinemas as critical spaces is not
without its implications. In examining the similarities between the three case studies, and
highlighting the way criticality functions in each respectively, I am providing an argument for
the valuing of the microcinema as contemporarily relevant art organizational model ripe for and
worthy of replication. This model provides meaningful artistic encounters by facilitating public
forums, strengthening connections between artists, subjects, and audiences. Furthermore the
microcinema provides a model site for fostering the preservation and activation of important and
existentially threatened art works and experiences.
The coda of this thesis reflects my belief in and avocation of scholarship that attempts to
enact the creative forms and/or ideals championed by its subject (or author in the case of a
polemic). I have chosen to expand upon a text by Hollis Frampton - an iconic American avant-
garde filmmaker, poet, and theoretician - in support of the ideas expressed throughout this paper.
Much the way contemporary microcinemas might reanimate the 16mm frames of Framptons
oeuvre, my intentions are to reinvigoration the ideas expressed by one of cinemas most astute
5

critics and practitioners, in light of our contemporary moment. In such a conclusion I wish to
suggest further studies of the microcinema that bare witness to its pasts and potential futures
through the reactivation of its apposite archived histories.

6

CHAPTER ONE: MICROCINEMA PRECEDENTS
A crucial case model for the study of the evolution of microcinemas is the pluralistic, and
to a large extent anarchic, form of Canyon Cinema in its early years. What started as a local and
artist run screening series/party in Bruce Baillie’s
6
backyard of his Canyon California home,
Canyon Cinema grew into an artistic-community-organized nomadic screening series that moved
from space to space and held events and screenings sporadically. Original venues included
Ernest “Chick” Callenbach’s backyard, an “anarchist restaurant” in Berkley called Bistro San
Martin, and the theater at the Oakland Arts Institute (which was often broken into and used
without official permission).
7
The influential lineage of early Canyon Cinema’s legendary
nomadic model falls neatly into the history of recent microcinemas and even once again the
term’s coiner Barton and Sherman’s Total Mobile Home microcinema. Scott MacDonald maps
it elegantly:
Though the early, community-oriented screenings evolved into a formal
organization, and in time became the San Francisco Cinematheque, the original
Canyon has continued to have an impact; indeed it was one of the primary
influences on what has recently become known as the “microcinema” movement
– a nationwide network of small, almost familial screening rooms… For Barton
and Sherman, Baillie’s original Canyon Cinema was a crucial inspiration: “In
fact, one of our early shows (In 1994) at Total Mobile Home was a series of
morning salons w/ Bruce Baillie where the connection between what we were
doing and Baillie’s Canyon screenings was dialogued”
8

MacDonalds claim of a “nationwide network” is difficult to prove simply in observations of
influential and structural similarities. The extent of direct communication between

6
Filmmaker Bruce Baillie was one of Canyon Cinema’s founders and its first director. Bruce Baillie also
helped found the San Fransisco Cinematheque. He has made over 25 films.
7

Scott MacDonald, Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor.
(University of California Press, 2008), 8

8
Scott MacDonald, Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor.
(University of California Press, 2008), 9
7

microcinemas is ultimately beside the point perhaps, and the resonances between the spaces and
programs of the microcinemas provide suitable evidence for their consideration as part of a
relevant network. What does seem immediately relevant however in regards to the spaces is how
the progression from unstructured artistic event experimentation to a more structured
organization in Canyon Cinema’s history provided an important precedent for the contemporary
microcinema as a cinema in a permanent space. What is at play in this historicization is a
recognizable dominance, at least evolutionarily speaking, of microcinemas that hold permanent
residency - not necessarily permanent in the sense that they exist only in one location or even the
same location forever, but at least a practical permanency in one or multiple sites for a
significant period of time during a the annual screening calendar. This move toward residency in
space with practically permanent geographical location is a move toward institutionalization and
ultimately organizational and legal legitimation. There is still a critical gesturing in the way that
these microcinema façades are noticeably different from traditionally theatrical models. The
microcinema is an unraveling of theatrical conventions, and functions as an important act of
distinction that champion’s individualization, uniqueness, and perhaps suggests a critical
framework rather than devotion to say entertainments of escapism.
These points help to support a read of microcinemas as organizations whose activities
could be thought of as devoted to a kind of critical labor or work. In The Paradox of Art and
Work, Lars Bang Larsen suggests an example for the understanding of an artistic activity that
manages a hybridization of art and labor that is strikingly similar to the microcinema:
The conflation of work and art can perhaps be addressed in terms of what the
artist Helio Oiticica called Quasi-Cinema. This term, coined in 1973, announced
Oiticica’s revision of the cinematic order, in which he opened up film in
itsheterogenous aspects by producing spaces in which audiences were relieved of
8

viewing conventions and able to enjoy, from a lying or standing position,
projections of multiple images onto various surfaces.
9

Larsen later reveals skepticism about the critical potential of Quasi-Cinema in Oiticica’s
conceptualization, but his definition of the quasi is an important one in understanding the
function of the microcinema as a critical one in the history of Cinema and artistic reception. “To
render an object quasi is to take it apart and make its elements visible; thus, a quasi-cinema is the
analysis of the cinematic.” Microcinemas can be thought of as an analysis of and critical
engagement with the cinematic. This radical unraveling and filtering of the fundamental
structural components and syntactical elements of the cinematic allow space for the creation of a
definition of critical cinema. It allows microcinemas the aesthetic freedom to construct new
forms and spaces that meet the unique and individual missions of each microcinemas in terms of
its contextual specificity - whether it be in regards to its programmatic vision or responsive to its
environmental conditions.

9
Michelle Masucci. Work Work Work: A Reader on Art and Labor. (Sternberg Press, 2012), 18-19
9

CHAPTER TWO: SPACES: STOREFRONTS AND INTERIORS
The micro in microcinema should not be understood simply in terms of quantifiable
metrics – X many seats, with a ceiling X units high, and a projection screen of X,Y dimensions.
Rather, micro is probably best understood as referring to its locality. Locality in this sense
implies the immediate local surroundings and observable and relevant influences, environments,
and publics. The dominance of the multiplex is the result of a semantic slight of hand. Multiple
screen theaters provide the illusion of choice in the guise of a diversity of movies one can choose
from. I say illusion because what the kind of choice multiplex franchises offer is one created out
of corporate profit driven incentives that generalize an illusory general moving going public.
The microcinema simplifies the equation into a locally responsive one-screen format. Of course,
there will likely be a great deal of similarities between microcinemas in terms of their physical
scale and structural characteristics, but it is important to emphasize how each microcinema must
be understood ultimately as a product of its locality. Environmental conditions, economic forces,
community and other factors (those actively linked with microcinemas and existing on their
peripheries) are all at play in the shaping of a microcinema.
At this point it is important to consider the fact that the rise of the contemporary
microcinemas happens in the late 90s during a time when there is a great deal of theorization and
activity surrounding DIY (do it yourself) cultures and a return to localism as a response to
globalization. The cultural trends of these models of collective/co-operative organization and
self-publishing/exhibiting are an attempt at simplification via the scaling down of systems and
the promotion of local production and consumption practices. These trends tandem with the
emergence of what has been called relational art practices, or which are for better worse
canonized through Nicholas Bourriaud’s contentious treatise Relational Aesthetics (1998). In his
10

chapter Screen Relations: Today’s art and its Technological Model Bourriaud suggest that
“…our age is nothing if not the age of the screen.”
10
Despite many problems with regard to the
work’s main arguments – problems that have been adequately addressed by a number of critiques
i.e. Claire Bishop’s Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics
11
- there are a few relevant insights
Bourriaud makes that identify a groundswell in art history, criticism, and practice regarding
relations between subjects:
For some years now, there has been an upsurge of convivial, user-friendly artistic
projects, festive, collective and participatory, exploring the varied potential in the
relationship to the other. The public is being taken into account more and more.
As if, henceforth, this “sole appearance of a distance” represented by the artistic
aura were provided by it: as if the micro-community gathering in front of the
image was becoming the actual source of the aura, the “distance” appearing
specifically to create a halo around the work, which delegates its powers to it.
The aura of art no longer lies in the hinter-world represented by the work, nor in
the form itself, but in front of it, within the temporary collective form that it
produces by being put on show.
12

Bourriaud’s invocation of Walter Benjamin’s notion of aura is partially an attempt to
relocate the meaning of the art experiences from the artwork to the relations between the art
audience. The politics of his text are in opposition to a contemporary individualism as he
recognizes a threat in modernity’s strive to criticize the “predominance of the community over
the individual, and systematically critique forms of collective alienation.”
13
The called for
prescription to this problem according to Bourriaud is a reintroduction of plurality. He writes,
“Reintroducing the idea of plurality, for contemporary culture hailing from modernity, means

10
Nicholas Bourriaud. Relational Aesthetics. (Les presses du Réel 1998), p66
11

OCTOBER 110. (Fall 2004)

12
Nicholas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics. (Les presses du Réel 1998), p61
13

Nicholas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics. (Les presses du Réel 1998), p61

11

inventing new ways of being together, forms of interaction that go beyond the inevitability of the
families, the ghettos of technological user-friendliness, and collective institutions on offer.”
14

The way into a study of the microcinema is also the first accessible point of entry – the
storefront and the spaces themselves. The spaces microcinemas occupy reflect their respective
programmatic visions and organizational missions, and undoubtedly give insights into the ways
in which they act as discursive sites and sites of criticality.

Storefronts
One of the similarities shared by all three microcinemas is the fact that they operate out
of street level storefronts. Moreover, they avoid the aesthetic signifiers of colloquial cinemas
and other theatrical spaces (black boxes, comedy clubs, music venues, etc.) such as coming-soon
poster advertisements, illuminated marquees, and ticketbooths.
Echo Park Film Center, in Los Angeles, borrows from the vocabulary of commercial
retail in activating a window display space. Instead of showcasing hot trends and new products
the window space houses an out-of-commission Steenbeck flatbed film editor (a not-so-subtle
wink to passers by familiar with film editing technology that this space is not geared toward the
contemporary filmmaking professional). Other film related objects like cans, rewinds, and reels
are scattered around, and the glass itself prominently displays their titular sign painted in orange
and blue and surrounded by large pastel flowers and a neon sign in the shape of a VHS tape.
Other Cinema’s storefront space in San Francisco doesn’t bear its name due to the fact
that it operates out of the Artists’ Television Access gallery
15
as more of a weekly haunt than a

14
Nicholas Bourriaud. Relational Aesthetics. (Les presses du Réel 1998), 60
15
Founded by John Martin & Marshall Weber in 1984. According to it's mission statement found at it's
web site: “Artists’ Television Access is a San Francisco-based, artist-run, non-profit organization that
cultivates and promotes culturally-aware, underground media and experimental art. We provide an
12

shared rental. However, the ATA storefront window display - a sort of mini video art gallery
offering a screening showcase of looping video and film art on monitors plopped upon different
sized pedestals - compliments the weekly event and seems appropriately in tune with the
attitudes of Other Cinema (just above the door is a large poster in the shape of a movie slate that
reads “Support Underground Film”). The eye-catching firetruck red colored door is plastered
with DIY Xeroxed flyers for future events, not just for Other Cinema but also for other
screenings associated with the San Francisco Cinematheque.
Light industry’s storefront, In Brooklyn, New York, is by far the most minimal in its
style. The space is shared with two other organizations: Triple Canopy, an “online magazine,
workspace, and platform for editorial and curatorial activities.”
16
, and The Public School, New
York a non accredited, no curriculum based school that supports “autodidactic activities,
operating under the assumption that everything is in everything.”
17
The public is invited to
submit proposals for which then are organized into classes and meetings with the help of
organizers and activist educators. The entrance to the space in Greenpoint Brooklyn, located on
otherwise residential streets near the east river, offers no frills. A clean cut glass door façade
with simple black vinyl listing the three organizations and the address. The only thing visible
just inside the glass door is an undecorated hallway and large grey metal double doors that a first
time viewer can only assume leads to the relevant common space and offices. The likeness of

accessible screening venue and gallery for the exhibition of programmed and guest-curated screenings,
exhibitions, performances, and events. We believe in fostering a supportive community for the exhibition
of innovative art and the exchange of non-conformist ideas. (http://atasite.org/History/started1.html).”
Marshel Weber explains that the impetus for starting ATA: “when we started Artists' TV Access, you
have to imagine a place where most of the major art venues did not show video art yet and there was no
video art or media curator at the [SF]MOMA. Most of the performance and gallery spaces were started in
the 70s by people who were mostly doing body performance and installation...not traditional art forms but
not heavily influenced by media.

16
Triple Canopy. Last modified 2012. http://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/about
17
The Public School. Last Modified 2012. http://thepublicschool.org/about
13

the front (as well as the interior that I’ll describe later) to a blue chip Art Gallery is no
coincidence. The space was initially built by the landlord with the intention to house an art
gallery.
18

Understanding microcinemas as cinema organization that reside in more or less
permanent physical spaces (as opposed to nomadic or event based organizations that haunt other
theatrical spaces or spark cinematic events in alternative venues like parks or fairgrounds) is
essential in understanding broader shifts in the ways critical and alternative cinemas have come
to exist in our contemporary context.

Interiors
The Echo Park Film Center, founded by Paolo Davanzo in 2002, is located in the central-
east Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park (located just a few miles north of downtown)
19
and
offers a 60 seat microcinema that showcases an “eclectic array of experimental and documentary
film and video from around the world.” Davanzo has a background as an artist and filmmaker
with a bent for activism and an interest in social justice. The mission statement on its web site
defines the EPFC as:
a non-profit media arts organization committed to providing equal and affordable
community access to film/video resources via five channels: a neighborhood
microcinema space, free and nominal cost education programs, a comprehensive
film equipment and service retail department, a green-energy mobile cinema &
film school, and a touring film festival showcasing local established and
emerging filmmakers.
20

18
Interview with Ed Halter.
19
Henceforth referred to as “EPFC”
20
Echo Park Film Center. Last Modified 2013. Http://www.echoparkfilmcenter.org
14

A regular screening series occurs every Thursday at 8:00pm with the occasional Friday
and Saturday screenings. The interior suggests a kind of controlled chaos. Posters of previous
EPFC events line the walls, reflecting its history directly upon itself, a gesture akin to punk rock
venues. A pull down screen hangs directly in front of the storefront window blocking the light
and view of the street during screenings. Along one wall is a DVD library that visitors and
EPFC members can rent from at nominal costs that is divided into genres like “documentary”
“short films” and a hefty “Experimental” section. Along another is another kind of library, one
of 16mm prints ranging from contemporary experimental films to wildlife stock footage from the
50s of bears catching salmon. Near the screen there is a sales counter with a display case chock
full of small gauge film editing supplies (splicing tape, plastic cans and reels, film spools, super
8mm film stock etc.) and EPFC merchandise (pins, t-shirts with drawings of 16mm film
cameras, DVD compilations of student works). Filmmakers, regardless of membership, can also
rent equipment of all kinds, production and exhibition related - be it a 16mm Bolex camera, a
VHS camera, a digital projector, a screen, editing equipment, or even the theater space itself.
The EPFC can be understood as a center in which all aspects of its organization
encourage not only a level of participation, but a center from which those very aspects actively
encourage its propagation. The EPFC, perhaps more so than the other case studies presented in
this paper, is occupied with a desire to not just to exhibit works, but to create the conditions
necessary to promote and stimulate cultural production and dissemination. The organization of a
community goes a step further in providing a space for training for those interest in becoming not
just active viewers, but active makers. The workshops and classes they offer are the prototypical
examples of this. Divided into three categories - Youth, Senior, and Adult - the EPFC offers a
number of classes that last anywhere from one session to upwards of twelve. The youth classes
15

are concerned in large part with teaching media literacy or film theory alongside practice and
technique. A popular recurring class Dear Diary explores diarist modes of media making. It
does this by exposing students to a history to filmic works via a screenings series and also by
teaching the students how to use technologies associated with the history of diarist tradition they
espouse. According to the class description:
This advanced, four-week intensive class will immerse students in the
history and practice of personal / diary filmmaking. Through screenings and
discussions students will explore the diverse forms personal filmmaking has
taken, from amateur home movie makers to the avant-garde. Students will create
their own film diaries, using regular 8 mm film—the dominant format for home
movie making from its development by Kodak during the Great Depression until
the invention of Super 8 mm. All students will complete their projects entirely
through analog means, and will learn every step of the process from loading the
camera, using a light meter, editing using a splicer, and how to operate
projectors.
21

The goal is not simply to empower citizens as makers and enable creative expression, but also to
produce and champion preservationists. The focus on regular 8mm film - a difficult to procure
medium that depends on boutique fabricators who cut larger industry stocks (like 35mm) down
to size by order
22
- and the last phrase regarding “how to operate a projector” gets to the crux of
one crucial detail of the EPFC mission. On the surface, the class seems irrelevant to
contemporary modes of moving image making and sharing. It is indeed a rare experience today
to work with 8mm, but this is precisely the objective of the class – to provide a rare experience in
a time when digital production and web based distribution and dissemination are ubiquitous and
user friendly. This is an oppositional strategy, marking an emphasis on diaristic cinema through
a learning of its history that involves acting out “out dated” processes. It is safe to say that this

21
http://echoparkfilmcenter.org/classes/youthclasses.html
22
An example of one such business would be Pro8mm in Burbank, CA (http://www.pro8mm.com/).
16

kind of learning is not one associated with vocational training. There is no steady market for
8mm production, and whatever niche markets do exists are extremely rare. The skills associated
with the class have more to do with fostering an intimacy with history, and providing enrichment
through, and appreciation of a craft however irrelevant its technology may be to a contemporary
consumer market.
Classes take place mostly in the interior space. The theater pews, made up of a variety of
seating types - from salvaged theater rows, to couches, and scattered folding chairs – are not
bolted to the floor and can thus be moved or stored if space is needed for workshop tables. The
“projection booth” is an open hole cut into the wall separating the “offices” from the theater
space. In the offices, computers and editing decks abound and so do shelves stacked high with
cameras and other equipment. The office doubles as another space for work and learning, and
further accentuates its co-op feel. Every inch seems like a communal one where the delineations
between employee and patron are rendered null.
23
But this is not the only extension from the
center’s center. The EPFC also boasts two satellite locations, the Analog Annex in Atwater
Village, and Echo Luna an international node located in Legedzine in central Ukraine which
hosts one of EPFC’s residency programs advertising a mission statement all its own where
“artists are encouraged to work on projects that engage community members and local resources
in order to expand cross-cultural dialogue on global sustainability issues, celebrate cultural
traditions, exchange skills and knowledge, and improve village infrastructure.”
24

23
The EPFC’s bathroom is even shared with their next-door neighbors, Mark Allen’s Machine Project.
24
Since 2007 the EPFC also operates a project called the Filmmobile –Its web site states: “With help
from local sustainable energy and design experts, we transformed a former school bus from a diesel-
guzzling hunk of metal into an eco-friendly mobile cinema and educational facility with the ability to
provide free documentary film screenings and filmmaking workshops in non-traditional venues to media-
marginalized populations, specifically at-risk youth, girls and young women, recent immigrants, the
homeless, people of color, seniors and low-income earners. These programs provide a fertile meeting
space for the exchange and validation of ideas, knowledge, and experiences, empowering individuals to
17

Experimental filmmaker and programmer Craig Baldwin founded Other Cinema around
1978 at 21
st
street and Valencia in the Mission district of San Francisco. Currently operating out
of Artist Television Access Gallery just next door to its original location, Other Cinema is
comprised of a three part organization: a microcinema, a quarterly published online zine
(Otherzine), and a DVD production and distribution label under the name Other Cinema Digital
(OCD).
25
Other Cinema presents itself as:
…a long-standing bastion of experimental film, video, and performance in San
Francisco's Mission District. We are inspired and sustained by the ongoing
practice of fine-art filmmaking, as well as engaged essay and documentary forms.
But OC also embraces marginalized genres like "orphan" industrial films, home
movies, ethnography, and exploitation, as media-archeological core-samples, and
blows against consensus reality and the sterility of museum culture.
26

The Other Cinema screening series currently runs during the spring and fall
seasons of each year. Every season is capstoned by the comically titled event Avant To
Live which features “new cinema that champions personal expression and radical form.
Constituting the season's most exploratory program--and with many of the makers in
person.” Each screening - lead programmed by Craig Baldwin - is built according to a
titular theme and features a mix of independent fringe features, new and old experimental
shorts, and offbeat documentaries.
On one such night, November 24
th
2012, Other Cinema hosted visiting filmmakers
showing works under the programmatic title Mapping Margins. The main feature of the night,
Matt McCormick’s experimental travelogue Great Northwest was having its California premiere.

share their unique stories with the world. The bus itself serves as a model of sustainability through the
implementation of green technology while simultaneously regenerating the long and noble tradition of
itinerant cinema.
25
OCD has released work by artists like Vanessa Renwick, Greta Schnider, Animal Charm and even
Craig Baldwain himself.
26
http://www.othercinema.com/aboutoc.html
18

McCormick is no stranger to the United States experimental film scene. Some of his works like
The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal, and Sincerely Joe P. Bear, are within the popular
canon of experimental moving image art works that have been produced in the last few decades,
having seen a great deal of exposure through experimental film festivals like the Ann Arbor Film
Festival, Views From the Avant-Garde, and Images Festival in Toronto. Alongside his film
practice McCormick helped found and organize PDX Film Fest, Portland’s premiere
documentary and experimental film festival since 2004.
After giving an enthusiastic introduction, a Craig Baldwin proceeded to run behind the
seated audience, up the stairs to the projection booth, and after a minute or two of fumbling and
the sound of film cans crashing to the floor, turned off the 16mm loop of industrial agricultural
footage from the 70s and powered on the digital projector. Lights dim, an empty beer bottle falls
over with a sharp ringing clang and the full audience applauds the beginning opening title shot.
The majority of the audience in attendance seemed to be, in one-way or another,
involved in a number of San Francisco’s artistic scenes either as a maker, organizer, or frequent
attendee. Filmmakers, UC Berkeley students, a curator at the San Francisco Exploratorium, an
organizer of the San Francisco Cinematheque, and a programmer at the New No Nothing Cinema
(another local microcinema institution that has existed in San Francisco since 1982) who
described to me his plans for a program of experimental works around the subject of ice hockey.
Baldwin’s response to my inquiry about the make up of the audience for the night was a simple
and surprised “…oh you mean the regulars!”
Other Cinema is not interested in a mainstream commercial viability, but chooses to
present content that appeals, to a relatively small and specific community. This is a venture
where the marketplace is understood in local terms, or is driven by a concern for a certain quality
19

of content that can be geared towards a thread line of ongoing discussions that specific
communities have been involved with. That quality might be best described in relation to the
vocations of the Other Cinema “regulars.” Intellectually challenging content, usually generated
through a rigorously researched based process driven by a critical line of questioning. One need
only look toward the programming surrounding the event and the microcinema’s long screening
history to gain further insights into that content and the surrounding discussions (see appendix
B).
The weekly Saturday night screening series balances the weighted seriousness of its usual
content with a casual, almost party like atmosphere. Alcoholic beverages are served alongside
other concessions (yes, there is even buttered popcorn) and the gallery’s proximity to many of
The Mission’s bars and music venues positions it within the greater urban space of nightlife
entertainment. This context creates an air of conviviality and intellectual socialization. The Map
Margins series in 2012 was one part in a three part screening series entitled Psycho-Geography -
featuring works that investigate how geographies affect individuals and societies at large. This
thematic framing alludes to concepts developed by the Situationist International fittingly locating
Other Cinema in a kind of conceptual lineage with the historical avant-garde movement, likewise
interested in the “educative value” described by Guy Debord in his essay Introduction to a
Critique of Urban Geography who affirms: “there is nothing to be expected until the masses in
action awaken to the conditions that are imposed on them in all domains of life, and to the
practical means of changing them.”
27
There is always, depending on the visiting artist’s
willingness, time for Q and As and discussions. This suggests that the works exhibited merit a

27
Guy-Ernest Debord, Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography. (Les Lèvres Nues #6 Paris,
September 1955)
20

questioning and are invested in an experience that values discussions between audience members
in an active state past reception.
For the first two years of Light Industry’s history (2008 – 2009) they operated out of two
different spaces in Industry City
28
with a great deal of available commercial space . In 2010
Light industry moved in with Triple Canopy
29
for the first time and operated out of a space in
Livingston street. For the next year they were, for lack of a better term - spaceless, during which
time they organized a screening series called Couch Surfing in partnership with “like-minded”
institutions around the city.
30
In 2012 they moved to their current location in Greenpoint
Brooklyn. There is not much to describe about the space other than its emptiness. A grey carpet,
white walls, a stack of chairs and a folding table or two.
we are very minimal with what we do. We like to think of the cinema as an
event, and not a piece of architecture. And so for us the Cinema is putting down
chairs having the projector up and we basically set things up and take it down
every time we do it. We don’t have permanent seating. We don’t have a
permanent screen. We like that flexibility for a number of reasons one is, is that
allows us to do multiple formats, to do expanded cinema performances to
rearrange the space as we wish very reasonably, but as you said, also a nice thing
is that it’s easier to share a space. Although our aesthetic in terms of a minimal
that kind of aesthetic we were talking about that predates us sharing with
anybody… we thought about that in terms of it has a kind of DIY, even though it
doesn’t look like Other Cinema the spirit I think is the same, I mean that “look
we do this with almost nothing. It’s always possible, we just make everything
possible.” Although again we don’t look like Other Cinema, I think running

28
Industry City is comprised of a large complex of commercial spaces in areas of Greenwood Heights and
Sunset Park Brooklyn historically known as Bush Terminal.
29
Triple Canopy is non-profit 501(c)3 organizations that operates “an online magazine, workspace, and
platform for editorial and curatorial activities. Working collaboratively with writers, artists, and
researchers, Triple Canopy facilitates projects that engage the Internet’s specific characteristics as a
public forum and as a medium, one with its own evolving practices of reading and viewing, economies of
attention, and modes of interaction.” Quote taken from the organizations’ mission statement.
30
From interview. – Anthology Film Archives, Filmforumn (actually first organization to ever do an
event at filmforum. New Museum, Participant, and BAM
21

things lean is part of an organizational ethos that we share with them. We’re not
a big expensive organization, we keep our expenses very low, we don’t have
many expenses, we always pay artists, those things are important to us.
31

Thomas Beard and Ed Halter are very visible and active within the film and art world
center of New York City. Beard, a well-known curator and programmer in New York had also
served as one of the organizers of the microcinema program Ocularis
32
. Ed Halter is curator and
critic who has written for publications like Art Forum and the New Museum associated blog
Rhizome.org.
33
In an interview with Frieze in 2010 Halter and Beard reminisce about their
personal histories with the microcinemas that inspired them to develop Light Industry. Film
Societies like Amos Vogel’s Cinema 16 film, the Collective for Living Cinema, and Cinema
Texas provided models for their programming.
34
For many years Ed Halter also acted as the
director for the now defunct New York Underground Film Festival.

31
Interview with Ed Halter. January 2012
32
Ocularis venues included rooftop movie screenings in Williamsburg Brooklyn and also the Galapagos
Art Space in DUMBO, Brooklyn.
33
According to his website “teaches in the Film and Electronic Arts department at Bard College, and is
currently writing a critical history of contemporary experimental cinema in America.”
http://edhalter.com/info/bio/
34
A brief history of microcinema precedents and similar institutions will obviously have to be addressed -
including film forums like The Los Angeles Film Forum, other film Societies, cinemathques and
“underground cinema” venues like the ICA cinematheque in London.
22

CHAPTER THREE: PROGRAMMING
One need not look much further then the programming at microcinema spaces to
recognize similarities. This is due, in large part to a common allegiance to specific distribution
networks (ie. Canyon Cinema, The Filmmakers Co-op, Video Data Bank, Electronic Arts
Intermix) and archives (ie. MOMA circulating film and video library, the UCLA Film and
Television Archives, and the Academy Film Archives - which thanks in large part to curator,
maker, and preservationist Mark Toscano houses a number of significant american post-war
experimental film works). However, other likenesses in form and content suggest a much greater
connection, and allow for the consideration of microcinemas as complexly networked and
complimentary to each other.
It is important at this point to rearticulate the dominant mode of cinema production and
consumption. Corporatized studio systems control and regulate programming to a large extent.
The golden era of cinema saw the ownership of theaters by the Hollywood studios themselves,
which produced a direct financial relationship between the production, distribution, and
exhibition of cinema. Today the relationship is less direct, but the motivation behind most
production and distribution is still the same – profit. This produces a system of making and
seeing that is largely guided by appeasement and priced according to the associated exhibition
and distributions markets. While undoubtedly valuable as a cultural critique, a lengthy analysis
and investigations of forces driving those markets or the audiences’ desires is not fundamental to
understanding the criticality of microcinema programming. This is because microcinema
programming does not simply operate in opposition to dominant cinema in structure and
purpose. Rather the programming offered by microcinemas should be read as much as tangential
to dominant cinema, or as an expansion upon dominant cinema, or even sometimes not in
23

dialogue with dominant cinema forms at all. These is a notions are taken up and supported by a
number of cinema theoreticians and critics of works that find their homes in microcinema spaces
- most notably by Gene Youngblood in Expanded Cinema (1970) and P. Adams Sitney in
Visionary Film (1974).
Light Industry’s program often mixes canonical “experimental” and “avant-garde” films /
videos with more obscure fare, lecture series, and sometimes even live music. As Thomas Beard
puts it:
Annette Michelson, another hero of ours, rightly noted, [cinema 16] ‘attempted to
break down the distinctions between industrial film and avant-garde film,
between films that form part of a canon and those which are on the margins or
periphery of canonical taste.’ That’s practically our mission statement.
35

This is an essential commonality between all three microcinemas. They program mostly
from a repertory and revival impulse and include new works in relation to older ones. This
collage aesthetic of styles and genres and bodies of cinema both new and old suggested a queering
of the bodies of historic of cinema and of the bodies of contemporary cinema.
Light industry's 2012 season began with an HD restoration of Charles Atlas' 1977 16mm
double projection work entitled Torse. The fifty-five minute poetic documentation of Merce
Cunningham's 1976 dance elegantly sets a tone for a year in programming that focuses on the
cinematic intersection of various artistic practices and works. The subsequent screening of
Yvonne Rainer's Kristina Talking Pictures move us fluidly from the cine-choreographic to a work
that is layered with reflections on relationships, art, and catastrophe. While there are subtle and
resonant juxtapositions within the screening series, it would be wrong to say the Light Industry

35
Interview with Ed Halter. January 2012
24

calendar moves fluidly from screening to screening with a thematic thread line or overarching
narrative.
Light industry also makes use of programming works that fall outside the cinematic. On
October 23rd co-resident organization Triple Canopy co-presented a lecture by philosopher and
coder Alexander R Galloway on The Interface Effect. Lectures and Screening introductions are
not always confined to the artists of a given work. In instances where the programmed artist is
deceased, Ed Halter and Thomas Beard often invite other artists, historians, and critics to speak
on their behalf. Andy Warhol's 1965 work Paul Swan was introduced by Douglas Crimp taking
the form of a reading from his new book on Warhol titled "Our Kind of Movie:" The Films of
Andy Warhol, and Michael's Snow's La Région Centrale was introduced by Chantal
Akerman. The tribute screening is also a format that appears in all three microcinema screening
calendars. In August of 2012, Light industry programmed a night called For Chris Marker which
screening many of the influential filmmaker's works (footnote speakers and titles) and was billed
as "a free, all-day screening of [Marker's] films, with introductory remarks and remembrances by
Paul Chan, Thomas Keenan, Tom McDonough, Molly Nesbit, Martha Rosler, Jason Simon, and
Amy Taubin, among others."
Echo Park Film Center's tribute for the year took the form of three separate night
screenings of work by recently deceased artist and filmmaker Robert Nelson. Nelson's influence
as an artist and longtime resident of California (also graduate and professor at the San Francisco
Art Institute) was honored in the screenings that were co-presented and introduced by other
curators and preservationists in Los Angeles like Adam Hyman of the Los Angeles Film Forum
and Mark Toscano of the Academy Film Archive. Other Cinema's tribute for the year, the Cage
Centennial, doesn't honor the recently departed but rather celebrates the anniversary of John Cage
25

with a screening of John Smalley's John Cage and the Spirit of DADA. These screenings fall
somewhere in between the worlds of obituary, wake, and retrospective, providing a potential
space for healing in what can be considered rather close knit communities. The sense of
community, the sharing of the pains of loss through the joys of cinematic representation
illuminate a strange but palpable function of the contemporary microcinema.
The EPFC's programming calendar, like Light Industry's and Other Cinema's,
incorporates not only screenings and events curated by a team of programmers but invites other
organizations to use the space as their own site for programming and curation. The most obvious
occurrence of this type of invitational program are festivals or special events that align with the
interests of each microcinema like the EPFC's hosting of the Los Angeles Transgender Film
Festival, and PXL THIS 21! the 21st annual Pixel Vision film festival directed and organized by
Gerry Fialka. What distinguishes the Echo Park FIlm Center from the other two is the
introduction of various kinds of residency programs within its larger organization structure -
particularly a program called LA AIR which "invites LA filmmakers to utilize EPFC resources to
create new works over four weeks. Another similar program is the monthly Open Screenings
night that invites anyone to come with work to show (maximum length ten minutes) and
workshop in an egalitarian off-the-cuff style screening. The formats listed in the description of
the event include DVD, VHS, miniDV, DVCAM, Super 8, Standard 8, and 16mm. The variety of
formats reveals an ideological cornerstone of the EPFC - a devotion to providing a space capable
of screening a wide range of formats, many of which are commercially discontinued or soon to be
discontinued. The preservationist impulse is complimented by an archival one as well in the
recurring program Highlights From the Archive which culls the 16mm film library to show rare
and forgotten industrial, education, personal, and promotional films. This years Highlights
26

advertised two works called Computers: The Friendly Invasion and Discovering Electronic
Music! which were followed by a live performance by local artist and musician Casey
Anderson. The EPFC calendar contains a great deal of work traditionally known as experimental
cinema, including screenings like their March 15th program which paired the works of artists
Kurt Kren, Rose Loweder, and Robert Schaller. Documentary screenings also lean towards
unorthodox styles like Adam Curtis' landmark work All Watched Over By Machines of Love and
Grace, which also screened at Other Cinema the same year.
Other Cinema's programming style falls somewhere in between Echo Park FIlm Center's
and Light Industry's. While there isn't a recognizable threadline in any of the spaces, Other
Cinema comes the closest to curating the screening season into a number of themed series (like
the Psycho-Geographies series described in the spaces chapter). Their Psychedelia Series for the
year looks at visions and representation of altered states and psychedelic experiences is a theme
well suited for the city of San Francisco, with its tumultuous and iconic history of psychedelic
experience. Programs like Archive Fever, and the Right to Remix present found footage and
recycled image works (footnote william weiss and his definition of recycled images) in the avant
garde film tradition.
Similar to the EPFC and Light industry, there is a focus on a variety of formats and
technologies that suggests an attitude toward cinema that is not medium specific but medium
rich. In the billing for an event called Analog Church, Baldwin writes - "indulging in our love for
forgotten format and media archeology lore, Jeremy Rourke & Co debut two live performances,
The Biography of a Motion Picture Camera and The Paperman May Charleston. Ben wood, in
the apparel of none other than Eadweard Muybridge, affords us a charming glimpse into those
halcyon days of the Magic Lantern… Lori Varga, high preistess for tonight's 'church' powers up
27

her 4 projectors in Beyond the Frames of Light and Strange Sound…"
36
Included in the year's
programming is also a documentary that "examines the early life and subculture of the fisher price
PXL 2000" with PXL THIS director Gerry Fialka in person.
The programming of the microcinema tends to move away from the presentation of the
feature length narrative film, even those considered in the vein of art. Rather the microcinema
seems to provide a space for films and videos working outside the parameters of what is generally
considered commercially successful. This is arguably a politically radical position, and a critical
housing of works that are in and of themselves critical in the ways in which they question or
subvert the conventionally accepted codes of moving image art making and exhibition. Para-
cinematic performances, lectures, open screenings, residencies, and more contribute to the
programmatic framework of the microcinema. A great deal of the programming also displays a
devotion to conservation practices and the representation of works that have fallen out of
circulation or commercial relevancy. It is no surprise then that both EPFC and Other Cinema
hosted programs during their 2012 calendars that examined the Occupy Movement with works
either directly referencing it or dealing with issues appropriate to the movement. Other Cinema's
program regarding this, entitled Occupy Cinema included works such as David Martinez's
Autumn Sun: The Story of Occupy Oakland, Bill Morrison's Mic Check, and billed "tentative
contributions" from politically charged makers such as Martha Colburn, Jem Cohen, Les
Leveque, Mike Kavanaugh, and Black Hole." A portion of the $7 ticket price proceeds were
donated to Occupy SF.

36

Other Cinema Calendar Fall 2012

28

CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION: A RECONSIDERATION OF INFINITE CINEMA
As storefronts and physical spaces the three case studies critically engage the codes of the
spectacular (in both the Debordian and Buadrillardian senses) theatrical setting. They offer an
alternative to and/or expansion on dominant cinema. Alternative because the experiences they
offer tend to include challenging content that offers critically in the form of direct opposition to
audience/subject relations that the dominant cinema offers in the form of appeasement based
consumer entertainment. Also microcinemas act as a site of resistance to the hyperreality of
advertising image bombardment that saturates the corporate media landscape which we
contemporaneously experience mostly through portable digital screens that interface with the
internet and its .com prevalence. The microcinema offers a programmatic vision that is not
based on seeking monetary profit through the exhibition of new studio releases or a particular
interest in popular market driving forces. Instead it celebrates reparatory screenings, obscure and
challenging content, endangered /orphaned art films, and critically engaging cinematic works.
Microcinemas provide sites for the interaction of publics in a time when public spaces become
harder to find and access; where the only vast public meeting places are social networking sites
and cyberspace avatar life simulators. The microcinema emphasizes the social congregation of
warm physical bodies.
Perhaps it is apropos to invoke an image-maker who devoted much of his oeuvre to the
structural investigation of moving image art mediums and their philosophical/poetic potentials.
Hollis Frampton is an artist whose works have graced the programs of institutions like all three
microcinema spaces either through his writings, lectures, or his filmic works. In Hollis
Frampton’s For A Metahistory of Film: Commonplace Notes and Hypotheses a notion of infinite
cinema is posited. In the process of theorizing human understanding and the experience of
29

history (an impossible task that does not escape Frampton, for his humor is as biting as it is
ironically insightful) he lays out a logical argument for perforating the difference (and thusly
disempowering any potential hierarchy between) the photographic still image and the illusory
moving cinematic image.
He writes:
The relationship between cinema and photography is supposed to present a vexed
question. Received wisdom on the subject is of the chicken/egg variety: cinema
somehow “Accelerates” still photographs into motion… It is an historic
commonplace that the discovery of special cases precedes in time the
extrapolation of general laws. (For instance, the right triangle with rational sides
measuring 3, 4 and 5 units is older than Pythagoras.) Photography predates the
photographic cinema.
So I propose to extricate cinema from this circular maze by
superimposing on it a second labyrinth (containing an exit) – by positing
something that has by now begun to come to concrete actuality: we might agree
to call it an infinite cinema.
A polymorphous camera has always turned, and will turn forever, its lens
focused upon all the appearances of the world. Before the invention of still
photography, the frames of the infinite cinema were blank, black leader; then a
few images began to appear upon the endless ribbon of film. Since the birth of
the photographic cinema, all frames are filled with images… A still photograph
is simply an isolates frame taken out of the infinite cinema.
37

Perhaps it is possible then to utilize Frampton’s ideas in the study of cinema spaces. If a
cinema is a space for the projection of cinematic images then let us think of an infinite cinema
not as a totality of images but as a totality of cinematic space. Once the cinema (a space of
exhibition for cinematic works) was breathed into existence then all the seats in the infinite

37
Jenkins, Bruce. On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters: For A Metahistory of film:
Commonplace Notes and Hypotheses (Artforum September 1971). MIT Press 2009. p134.
30

cinema are filled by cinemas with seats and the projector in the infinite cinema is composed of
every exhibition technology from the magic lantern, to the flip book, to the mobile smart phone.
The infinite projector is a monstrous machine, an undulating fleshy organic collage of parts in
constant shape shift, undergoing infinite transformation. A cinema then, is simply an isolated
space taken out of the infinite cinema space.
Frampton continues:
Typically, all that survives intact of an era is the art form it invents for itself…
The nightingale sings to charm the ladies. Cave paintings presumably assisted
the hunt; poems, Confucius tells us in the Analects, teach the names of animals
and plants: survival for our species depends upon our having correct information
at the right time.
As one era slowly dissolves into the next, some individuals metabolize
the former means for physical survival into new means for psychic survival.
These latter we call art. They Promote the life of human consciousness by
nourishing our affections, by reincarnating our perceptual substance, by
affirming, imitating, reifying the process of consciousness itself..
38

If we are to take my previous expansion of Frampton’s notion of infinite cinema further to
fit within this later argument then we must find a substitute for what he calls art. If we are to
take the microcinema programmers in sincere consideration, we must acknowledge their act as a
creative one. Therefore, what Frampton calls art we must call curating, or programing. This is
of course only possible if we think of cinema programing or curating as a logical extension of the
cinematic works. This is no problem; a work demands that it be experienced in order to exist. A
work that does not show may just as well not exist for our purposes. Perhaps it rests-in-peace in
an archive, awaiting reanimation at the hands of an exhibitor. This does not stray from
Frampton’s aim at analogizing consciousness in order to reveal it. The cinema is still as

38
Jenkins, Bruce. On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters: For A Metahistory of film:
Commonplace Notes and Hypotheses (Artforum September 1971). MIT Press 2009. p135.
31

analogous to the process of consciousness as the camera is analogous to the human body and the
filmstrip analogous to memory. Nathiel Dosrky in his lecture Devotional Cinema echoes this
observation:
We view films in the context of darkness. We sit in darkness and watch an
illuminated world, the world of the screen. This situation is a metaphor for the
nature of our own vision. In the very process of seeing, our own skull is like a
dark theater, and the world we see in front of us is in a sense a screen. We watch
the world from the dark theater of our skull. The darker the room, the more
luminous the screen.
It is important to understand what we’re participating in, to realize that
we rest in darkness and experience vision.
39

But what about the microcinema is more apt for promoting what Frampton calls “the life of
human consciousness?” for “nourishing our affections,” and “affirming the process of
consciousness itself?” Our metaphor suggests a consciousness that is not governed by a singular
voice, a self conscious mind of singular power relation that makes decisions and experiences the
world and animates the body in behavior and decision, but that we exist and make decision based
on collectivity, on a society. The cinematic work is to the mind as the cinema is to society - a
multiplicity of view points constantly battling for, and at times agreeing a course of action that
decides how life is lived. A democratic consciousness. The Internet and its comment streams
surely provide for this on a grand scale, and the whole of those involved have unfiltered access to
input suggestions. But, however instantaneous that dialogue may seem, it is still mediated by a
technology that does not - and cannot - ever achieve real time significance because it is a floating
reality like the futile orbiting Astronaut described by Baudrillard in the Ecstasy of

39
Nathaniel Dorsky. Devotional Cinema. (Tuumba press 2005), 25-26
32

Communication
40
. The same is true for microcinemas perhaps, but at least they are one layer of
mediation closer to actual presence. Experiencing imaginary signifiers flicker on the screen is
indeed a spectacular layer removed from reality. However, corporeal bodies in a room, who
have made the decision to congregate, for a few moments in time, in the vast landscape of the
real, in the physical presence of each other is a powerful and meaningful social gesture. If
indeed the goal of collective human discussion and dialogue is to influence a physical reality,
then the bringing together of physical creatures will certainly move one step further toward
altering the physical landscape. It is a matter of political urgency that this very process be
preserved, at all costs, and with a great deal of diversity in form, and a great collectivity in our
awareness of each other. This is a matter the microcinema conspires in, and provides, brilliantly.
The Echo Park Film Center, Other Cinema, and Light Industry not only represent the
critical potentials of the microcinema, but they enact those potentials to a high degree. Each
microcinema is unique in its critical functioning and style, but all three are marked by a
responsive quality. Their missions, aesthetics, and structures are informed and shaped with
respect to the local. The microcinema represents a critically engaged form of cinema that
emerges out of necessity, providing a contemporary space for marginalized cultural production
practices.

40
“Private Telematics: each individual sees himself promoted to the controls of a hypothetical machine,
isolates in a position of perfect sovereignty, at an infinite distance from his original universe; that is to say
in the same position as his bubble, existing in a state of weightlessness which compels the individual to
remain in perpetual orbit flight and maintain sufficient speed in zero gravity to avoid crashing into his
planet of origin… The landscape, the immense geographical landscape seems a vast, barren body whose
expanse is unnecessary… and what about time, this vast leisure time we are left with, and which engulfs
us like an empty terrain; an expanse rendered futile in its unfolding from the moment that the
instantaneousness of communication miniaturizes our exchanges in a series of instants. The body as a
stage, the landscape as a stage, and time as a stage are slowly disappearing. The same holds true for the
public space: the theatre of the social and of politics are progressively being reduced to a shapless,
multiheaded body.” Baudrillard, Jean. The Ecstasy of Communication. (Autonomedia, 1988), 24
33

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adorno, Theodor W. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (Routledge
Classics, 2001).

Ascher, Steven, and Edward Pincus. The Filmmaker's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for
the Digital Age. (New York: Plume, 1999)

Bishop, Claire. "Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics." October (Fall 2004, No. 110): 51-79

Baudrillard, Jean. The Ecstasy of Communication. (Autonomedia, 1988)

Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production. (Columbia University Press, 1993)

Bourriaud, Nicholas Relational Aesthetics. (Les presses du Réel 1998)

Benjamin, Walter. The Artist as Producer (Collected Writings, Volume II. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999)

Camper, Fred. The End of the Avant Guard. (Millenium Film Journal Nos. 16/17/18,
Fall/Winter 1986 – 1987

Conway, Kyle. Small Media, Global Media: Kino and the Microcinema Movement.
(Journal of Film and Video, Fall-Winter 2008)

Curtis, David and Rees, A.L. Expanded Cinema: Art / Performance / Film. (Tate
publishing London 2011)

Dorksy, Nathaniel. Devotional Cinema. (Tuumba press 2005), 25-26

Echo Park Film Center. Last Modified 2013. http://www.echoparkfilmcenter.org

Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. (MIT press
1991)

Halter, ed and Beard, Thomas. Life in Film Thomas Beard and Ed Halter. (Frieze
Magazine Issue 133, September 2010)

Jenkins, Bruce. On The Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters. The Writings of Hollis
Frampton. (MIT press, 2009)

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. (MIT press 2002)

Masucci, Michelle. Work Work Work: A reader on Art and Labor. (Sternberg Press,
2012)

McDonald, Scott. Cinema 16: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society.
34

(Temple University Press, 1966)

McDonald, Scott. Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film
Distributor. (University of California Press, 2008)

Other Cinema. Last modified 2013. http://www.othercinema.com/aboutoc.html

Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary film : the American avant-garde, 1943-2000 (Oxford
University Press, 2002).

Snow, Michael and Dompierre, Louise. The Collected Writings of Michel Snow (Wilfrid
Laurier University Press 1994)

The Public School. Last Modified 2012. http://thepublicschool.org/about

Triple Canopy. Last modified 2012. http://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/about

Virilio, Paul. The Vision Machine. (British Film Institute 1994)

Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics. (Semiotext(e) 1986)

Youngblood, Gene. Expanded Cinema (E.P Dutton and Co., Inc., New York 1970)

Zyrd, Michael. The Academy and the Avant Guard: A Relationship of Dependence and
Resistance. (Cinema Journal 45, No. 2. Winter 2006)

35

APPENDIX

Fig 1: Echo Park Film Center storefront, 2011.

Fig 2: Echo Park Film Center screening room. “A Place on Earth” screening August 18, 2012.

36

Fig 3: Echo Park Film Center screening room. KPFK Outreach Committee Presents
“Even the Rain: La Lluvia Tambien” October 19, 2012.

Fig 4: Echo Park Film Center directors Paolo Davanzo and Lisa Marr
alongside the Echo Park Filmmobile, 2012.

37

Fig 5: Light Industry storefront, January 2013.

38

Fig 6: Light Industry storefront, January 2013.

Fig 7: Light Industry storefront, January 2013.
39

Fig 8: Light Industry screening room, January 2013.

Fig 9: Light Industry lounge behind screening room and equipment area, January 2013.

40

Fig 10: Artists Television Access Gallery storefront, 2012.

Fig 11: Other Cinema “Mapping Margins” screening November 24, 2012.
41

Fig 12: Other Cinema “Mapping Margins” screening.
View from projection booth, November 24, 2012.

Fig 13: Other Cinema “Mapping Margins” screening.
Cashier and leaflet table November 24, 2012.
42

Fig 14: Other Cinema “Mapping Margins” screening.
Concession corner and Other Cinema banner. November 24, 2012.
43

Fig 15: Other Cinema “Mapping Margins” screening. Craig Baldwin in
the projection booth organizing the night’s programming list on November 24, 2012.

44

Fig 16: Other Cinema “Mapping Margins” screening. View of projection booth and Craig
Baldwin organizing the night’s programming list on November 24, 2012.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The term microcinema has emerged over the last decade in scholarship of film and film culture, journalism, and organization mission statements. This thesis explores three microcinemas as case studies: Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles, CA

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Asset Metadata

Creator Vernetti, Santiago (author)

Core Title Locating the microcinema: Echo Park Film Center, Light Industry, and Other Cinema

School School of Fine Arts

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere

Publication Date 05/06/2013

Defense Date 05/05/2013

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Art History,Craig Baldwin,Echo Park Film Center,Ed Halter,film studies,Light Industry,Lisa Marr,microcinema,OAI-PMH Harvest,Other Cinema,Paolo Davanza,Thomas Beard

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Anastas, Rhea (committee chair), Higa, Karin (committee member), Hudson, Suzanne P. (committee member), Wedell, Noura (committee member)

Creator Email santivernetti@gmail.com,santivernetti@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-251447

Unique identifier UC11287881

Identifier etd-VernettiSa-1655.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-251447 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-VernettiSa-1655-0.pdf

Dmrecord 251447

Document Type Thesis

Rights Vernetti, Santiago

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

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Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA