Angles: Women Working in Film and Video (2003)

Histor I see film—alternative or not—as fitting into a market structure. Even if you keep the process of experimentation, you address the question of how to make something pleasurable and insightful at the same time. If it’s not consumed in a mass market, it’s consumed by libraries, film schools and so forth. It’s bought, it’s consumed. Even work that was once perceived as radical is now a commodity. How can you pretend that alternative film is not inscribed for some kind of market? What do you get from filmmaking as a means of expression? I love it. I’m a production junky. To me filmmaking is a different way of knowing than writing, which is more open-ended, a way of recognizing the contradictions that are part of living. I write literature, fiction and poetry. I do what would be considered academic work, and I also make films. They are all very different ways for me to experience life. The biggest thrill is when I’m in front of an audience, and they engage in dialogue. When they tell me what they feel, what they saw, what they didn’t like. They have insights that I don’t have. It’s that point of dialogue that makes it all worth it. Interview by Elfrieda Abbe, first appeared in Angles, Volume 3, Number 2, 1997. © 1997 Elfrieda Abbe Frances Negrén-Muntaner is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and president of Polymorphous Pictures, based in Miami. The recipient of Pew, Ford, Truman, and Rockefeller fellowships, she holds an MFA from Temple University and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University. Best known for her award-winning narrative Brincando Ellen Bute ARY ELLEN BUTE (1906-1983) was an American pioneer in abstract animation and played Mar an important role in developing new experimental film techniques. Much of her work, often poetic abstractions set to music, is not known today because prints are not readily available. Perhaps her best known piece is Passage from James Joyce's Finnigans Wake, a live-action film that uses animation. She received a Cannes Film Festival prize in 1965 for the direction of a first feature film. 34 @ ANGLES el charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican, Negrén-Muntaner is currently completing two documentaries, titled Constantly Chamorro: The Making of Guam, USA, and The State of the Territory: U.S.— Puerto Rican Relations at the Crossroads. Her latest book, Passing Memories: Puerto Ricans in American Culture, és forth-coming from New York University Press. A popular columnist, she writes for The San Juan Star, and is also the founder of Miami Light Project's Filmmakers Workshop, a program that seeks to promote independent filmmaking in South Florida. Negrén-Muntaner is a founding board member of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers. Filmography AIDS in the Barrio (1990). A documentary about attitudes concerning AIDS and an educational media tool. Brincando el charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican (1994). A mix of fiction, archival footage, processed interviews and soap opera drama, Brincando el charco contemplates the notion of identity, class and race. The story of a light-skinned Puerto Rican photographer who is attempting to construct a sense of community in the United States. Puerto Rican ID (1995). Reflects on living with American television as a Puerto Rican viewer and its effects on cultural identity. At 16, Bute left home in Houston and enrolled in the to paint with light. She collaborated with filmmaker Lewis Jacobs and painter/mathematician Joseph Schillinger on Synchronization (1932), for which she created abstract drawings. With her husband, cinematographer Ted Nemeth, Pennsylvania Acdemy of Fine Arts, where she studied painting. Her early paintings reflect the influence of Expressionism and Cubism, showing her interest in light and movement. she made several abstract Her interest in finding animated shorts. ways of using light and color to create images with the order of music led her to work with electronic geniuses such as Thomas Wilfred and Leon Theremin to create a “color organ” that would enable her In 1983, the Museum of Modern Art honored Bute with a Cineprobe program. —Excerpt from “Energy in Motion,” Kit Basquin, Volume 3 Numbers 3& 4.