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