About Canyon Cinema
Canyon Cinema is an organization of filmmakers, which supports, promotes, distributes and preserves independent cinematic works of art. Filmmakers may become a part of the organization by submitting their films for screening for distribution and paying a yearly distribution fee. Our Board of Directors and Executive and Administrative Director consist of filmmakers who are shareholders in the organization.
Canyon Cinema has been distributing motion picture films in the Bay Area for the past 30 years. During this time period Canyon has become the world's largest and most prestigious distributor of independently produced avant-garde and experimental films. The Canyon Cinema inventory of films number more than 3500 motion picture films and videotapes. This inventory of work traces the history of the Experimental/Avant Garde filmmaking movement from the 1930's to the present. Canyon Cinema has become an invaluable source for films needed to teach film history in cinema departments in Universities in the United States and around the world. Many of Canyon Cinema filmmakers have recently received Guggenheim Awards and the films of Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Shirley Clark, Chick Strand, Oskar Fischinger, and local filmmakers Bruce Conner and Les Blank are included in the National Registry of Films in the Library of Congress.
Distinguished and long established Canyon filmmakers of the San Francisco Bay Area include James Broughton, Sidney Peterson, Bruce Conner, Robert Nelson, Gunver Nelson, Warren Sonbert, Kenneth Anger, George Kuchar, Les Blank, William Wiley, Barbara Hammer, Ernie Gehr, Eric Saks, Rock Ross, Lynn Sachs, Sandra Davis, Dominic Angerame, Nathaniel Dorsky, Phil Solomon, Lynn Kirby, Craig Baldwin, Anna Halprin, Elizabeth Sher, Alfonso Alvarez, Timoleon Wilkins, Greta Snider, Michael Wallin, Jay Rosenblatt, Cauleen Smith and David Michalik.
The artists in our collection represent a wide spectrum of social and cultural history. Canyon Cinema serves as a distribution resource for independent filmmakers working in challenging noncommercial forms. Canyon Cinema supports the distribution of films made by artists of traditionally undeserved communities including women, lesbian / gay / transgender, African-American , Asian and Latino. Canyon Cinema works with other arts and community organizations to program and present independent film and video programs throughout the year at many local, national and international venues.
This artistic history is available to local and international programmers. One of the services that Canyon Cinema provides is public access to our screening facilities which is available for a small hourly fee for viewing the work that is placed into distribution. People who use this service are researchers, cinema scholars, film critics, programmers, curators from Museums around the world, students, and those individuals interested in Independent and Experimental Film. The films and tapes that Canyon Cinema distributes are often not available from any other sources.
The Canyon Cinema distribution catalog is a comprehensive, archival volume which is used by potential renters and scholars. Listing the films and videotapes available for rental and purchase, the catalog is the main instrument for advertising Canyon artists' work. The catalog traces the early history of the Experimental/Avant Garde filmmaking movement to the present. It is updated and published every four to five years with a supplement published in each intervening year.
Any filmmaker has the opportunity to join by Canyon Cinema by paying a yearly distribution fee and depositing their films for review. Filmmakers set their own rental fees, collect the majority of the income and the prints remain the property of the filmmakers. Canyon's collection is kept up to date by illustrated catalogs and regularly published supplements. The Canyon Cinema Catalog is more than just a rental list: it is a reference book of film, the history of the avant garde film movement, and is indispensable to the understanding and appreciation of the films because it is written by the filmmakers themselves. In addition, members and other interested parties are kept abreast of pertinent issues by means of frequent communications from the staff and board of directors.
Canyon Cinema places active emphasis on treating the films in its collection with the utmost care and handling, giving them the kind of attention which is afforded any work of art. By housing its film inspection and shipping in the same space it conducts business, Canyon's dedicated office staff is able to ensure print quality which is unparalleled by any other distributor in the United States. As both film distributor and democratic organization, Canyon Cinema owes much of it's success to the spirit of teamwork. It is in it's individual members' self promotion, artistic dedication, and active participation in the running of the business that Canyon finds it's greatest strength. Members are always encouraged to develop new means of expanding distribution, such as creating thematic packages of films which can rented, sold and advertised together and participating in other promotional opportunities in development by the board and staff.
Canyon Cinema History
Beginning in the late 1950's, a growing movement brought together independent film artists whose work reflected a remarkable diversity in style and content. Variously called avant garde, underground, and experimental, these artists' work shared a vision of personal expression, free from the demands of commerical film conventions. The New American Cinema movement emerged from the underground and gave rise to several artist collectives.
Canyon Cinema was born in 1960 in Canyon, California. Starting as an informal series of independent and avant garde film shows projected onto a sheet in Bruce Baillies's backyard, Canyon Cinema ushered in a time of great hope for the arts. Artists and audiences who were drawn to the projected image found support, inspiration and above all, community there. By 1961 the Canyon Cinematheque was formed and became the first organization to regularly screen avant garde film on the west coast, produce a newsletter (The Canyon Cinemanews), and most importantly, serve as a nurturing and supportive influence for filmmakers who were producing challenging, and ground breaking work. These films were created outside the established norms of film making. By 1966 regular film series were established in Berkeley and San Francisco, and the small group of filmmakers created the Canyon Cinema Cooperative. This organization was envisioned as an alternative to the existing film distribution structure which would serve the varied needs and visions of individual filmmakers rather than the whims of the commercial marketplace. The time had come for truly democratic, non-discriminatory organization which would promote all types of independently made films, regardless of the social, political, economic, ethnic, and aesthetic backgrounds of their makers. That is precisely what Canyon Cinema, Inc. became and continues, very successfully to be.
Today, with more than 30 years of growth behind it, Canyon Cinema's membership circles the entire globe with more than 350 filmmaker members and a collection of more than 3500 motion picture films and videotapes spanning over five decades of filmmaking. Canyon Cinema films are screened all over the world: from film schools, to repertory cinemas, museums, galleries, and everything imaginable in between. Canyon Cinema, the most enduring and successful artists' cooperative, has been serving the San Fransico and Bay Area filmmaking community as a distributor and access facility of avant garde and experimental films since 1969.
Pictured:
Dominic Angerame, Executive Director, Canyon Cinema, Inc. and,
David Sherman, Administrative Director, Canyon Cinema, Inc.
About |
Canyon Cinema, Inc.
2325 Third Street, Suite 338
San Francisco, California 94107, USA
Phone/Fax: 415.626.2255
films@canyoncinema.com
This page was last updated on December 6, 1999
Copyright © 1999 Canyon Cinema, Inc.
