The Cinema Department was founded in 1969 by Larry Gottheim and Ken Jacobs. Following a visit from Jacobs the previous year, students petitioned the school to form a program devoted to the emerging culture of underground cinema. Over the years the program has housed many legendary artists and teachers, including Nicholas Ray, Ralph Hocking, Vincent Grenier, Ernie Gehr, Tomonari Nishikawa, Barbara Hammer, Julie Murray, and many more, and the program remains committed to fostering a space of radical experimentation in moving image arts.
SOME FORMER FACULTY INCLUDE:
Larry Gottheim
Larry Gottheim’s first artistic field was playing the clarinet. He went to the NYC High School of Music and Art as a music student. He played in several orchestras and went to Oberlin College because of the Music School, but soon turned to literature. He got a degree in Comparative Literature from Yale. He went to (then Harpur College) in the English Department. When he started making films he was able to teach some film courses. He had the desire to see if there could be an independent Department of Cinema, and eventually was able to start the Cinema Department. He taught filmmaking and the study of cinema art, and was Chair for many years, bringing in new faculty and visitors from around the world. His early works were often silent, structuralist meditations on landscapes and objects, including Fog Line (1970) and Blues (1970), and over the years his practice has expanded to include personal themes and complex sonic designs. His works have screened extensively throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Ken Jacobs
Ken Jacobs, was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1933. First a painter, he became involved in the underground film scene in New York in the 1960s, founding The Millennium Film Workshop with his wife Florence. A nonprofit filmmaker’s co-operative open to all, it made available film equipment, workspace, screenings and classes at little or no cost. In 1969, after a week’s guest seminar at Harpur College (now, ), students petitioned the Administration to hire Ken Jacobs. Together with Larry Gottheim he organized the SUNY system’s first Department of Cinema, teaching thoughtful consideration of every kind of film but specializing in avant-garde cinema appreciation and production.The American Museum Of The Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, hosted a full retrospective of his work in 1989, The New York Museum Of Modern Art held a partial retrospective in 1996, as did The American House in Paris in 1994 and the Arsenal Theater in Berlin in 1986. He has also performed in Japan, at the Louvre in Paris, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, etc. Honors include the Maya Deren Award of The American Film Institute, the Guggenheim Award and a special Rockefeller Foundation grant. A 1999 interview with Ken Jacobs can be seen on the Net as part of The University Of California at Berkeley’s series of Conversations With History.
Vincent Grenier
Vincent Grenier is a native of Quebec City, Canada. His work ranges from abstract, structuralist approaches to documentary, using sound and silence to create sensuous renderings of his subjects. Grenier's experimental films have been shown in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and China at showcases such as the Cineprobe at the Museum of Modern Art, the Anthology Film Archives, the Pacific Film Archives, the Collective for Living Cinema, Cinéma Parallel in Montréal, Centre George Pompidou in France, IFFR Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Media City Film Festival, and many more. His films have received awards from Black Maria Festival, Athens Film Festival Media City Film & Video Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and films by Grenier are included in the National Film Archive, and the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa, AGO in Toronto and at many other institutions in Canada and the US.
Ralph Hocking
Ralph Hocking has spent his life making and teaching art. He began his teaching career at in 1968, and served as Professor of video and computer art and Chair of the Cinema Department at until his retirement in 1998. In 1970 he established the independent nonprofit Experimental Television Center, with a residency and research program for artists, equipment access and training programs for the community, and regional and national exhibition programs. He has served as consultant, advisor and panelist with such organizations as the New York State Council on the Arts, the University Wide Arts Committee, the Society for Photographic Education, the Massachusetts Arts Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and many museums and galleries. His personal creative work has been exhibited widely throughout the country and in Europe and is distributed by Video Data Bank. He has received support for his work from the NEA Visual Arts Fellowship Program and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Tomonari Nishikawa
Nishikawa’s films explore the idea of documenting situations/phenomena through a chosen medium and technique, often focusing on process itself. His films have been screened at numerous film festivals and art venues, including Berlinale, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, London Film Festival, Media City Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Singapore International Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival. In 2010, he presented a series of 8mm and 16mm films at MoMA P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, and his film installation, Building 945, received the 2008 Grant Award from the Museum of Contemporary Cinema in Spain. Nishikawa started using a 16mm film projector for his performance projects in 2013, scratching the film emulsion to produce the visual and sound. His on-going 16mm film projection performance project, “Six Seventy-Two Variations,” have been performed at Cosmic Rays Film Festival, Exploratorium in San Francisco, FRACTO in Berlin, New York Film Festival, Shapeshifters Cinema in Oakland, among others. He also uses slide projectors in his performance or collaborative work with sound artists, and one of such works, “Chiratsuki,” was performed with Sontag Shogun at Mono no Aware VIII in New York.