In the 1960s, I was part of a group of filmmakers working in New York known as the Underground film movement, or the New American Cinema. I also worked as a writer for Life magazine and Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. I later went to London, and briefly became part of the Arts Lab in Drury Lane, organizing a screening of my own work, and making short films.
Back in the United States, I worked with the pioneering video group TVTV in 1976, during the group’s Los Angeles period, editing many of the episodes of their series Supervision for PBS, and later the group’s final effort, The TVTV Show, made in conjunction with NBC. I also edited a demo reel for Bill Murray, which was directed by Harold Ramis, entitled “The World’s Largest Car Wash.”
My films and videotapes have been screened at The Museum of Modern Art, The British Film Institute, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Jewish Museum, The San Francisco Cinématheque, The New Arts Lab, The Collective for Living Cinema, and The Kitchen Center for Experimental Art.
In the Fall of 1997, I delivered four lectures at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, to celebrate the publication of my book The Exploding Eye: A Revisionary History of 1960s American Experimental Cinema (SUNY UP, 1997), in conjunction with a series of screenings of classic experimental films I curated for the occasion.
On April 11–12, 2003, I was honored with a retrospective of my films at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. At that time, my independent films were acquired for the permanent collection of the Museum, in both print and original format.
Here’s an article on that period that I wrote for the journal Screening the Past 29; you can read it here.
Tags: Experimental Cinema, The Exploding Eye, Wheeler Winston Dixon
