Discovered

Canyon Cinema Discovered is a multifaceted fellowship program that aims to engender fresh perspectives on experimental cinema. For its first iteration, four curatorial fellows were invited to assemble programs from Canyon’s unique collection of artist-made films for in-person screening and online streaming. As a point of focus, the cohort was encouraged to activate undervalued and underseen works and to incorporate recent acquisitions as well as complementary works from outside of the collection, with the goal of instigating critical engagement with experimental cinema’s evolving legacy.

Curators: Aaditya Aggarwal, Juan Carlos Kase, Chrystel Oloukoï, Ekin Pinar

Artists: Dominic Angerame, Ephraim Asili, Bruce Baillie, Dara Birnbaum, Donna Cameron, Emily Chao, Miryam Charles, Julie Dash, Sandra Davis, Robert Fenz, Ja’Tovia Gary, David Gatten, Barbara Hammer, Christopher Harris, Sharon Hayes, Kate Millett, and The Women’s Liberation Cinema, Mike Henderson, Saul Levine, Toney W. Merritt, Everlane Moraes, Samba Félix N’diaye, Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut, Elena Pardo, Lynne Sachs, Hussein Shariffe, Single Spark Film, Cauleen Smith, Harry Smith, Rhea Storr, Paige Taul, Naomi Uman, Doug Wendt, Joyce Wieland

Programs

Playing in the Dark: Watery Experiments

Playing in the Dark engages the various ways in which blackness haunts the sea and is haunted by the sea. Borrowing from Toni Morrison, “playing in the dark” references the subdued Africanist pres…

Insurgent Articulations

A strong interest in the social, political, and cultural contexts has always been part and parcel of a good variety of experimental filmmaking practices, even though canonical works on experimental ci…

Prime Time Reverie

From cosmetic commercials to women-led talk shows to narrative melodrama, television catered to feminized viewers is a formally diverse genre, nudging, socializing, and mirroring its spectators in int…

Trajectories of Self-Determination: Experimental Cinema’s Embrace of Jazz

Experimental cinema has long embraced American vernacular music as a generative model, whether it supplied a formal template, an affective inspiration, or a point of cultural reference. From the colle…

Related Publications and Ephemera

Discovered Publications

Canyon Cinema Discovered Exhibition Catalog

Essays by Aaditya Aggarwal, Juan Carlos Kase, Chrystel Oloukoï, Ekin Pinar Edited by Topiary Landberg and Brett Kashmere Designed by Helen Shewolfe Tseng Additional artwork by Léopold Lambert 116 pages, full color, perfect bound 2022 To order a print copy, click here To download a digital copy, click here

Artwork Discovered Ephemera

Maps by Léopold Lambert

About the Maps Cartography is an operation of power and at the core of the colonial remaking of the world. Mapping bodies of water, in particular, remains a fraught and contested exercise. For Playing in the Dark: Watery Experiments, Léopold Lambert creates maps that borrow from the unruliness of waves to destabilize ingrained ways of […]

Artist Bios

Dominic Angerame is an American experimental filmmaker whose prolific output displays a particular interest in urban architectures and landscapes. Angerame has taught filmmaking at several North American universities and he was the executive director of Canyon Cinema between 1980 and 2012. Ephraim Asili is a filmmaker, DJ, and traveler whose work focuses on the African diaspora […]

Discovered Essays Publications

The Art of Curation: In Celebration of Canyon Cinema Discovered

By Lynne Sachs My engagement with Canyon Cinema started when I was a young filmmaker living in San Francisco in the mid 1980s. Three decades older and thousands of miles away, I am not a bit surprised that this intertwined relationship between a filmmaker and her beloved distributor continues to this day. Between 2020 […]

Screening Schedule

Discovered premieres take place at The Roxie Theater, San Francisco, California, accompanied by video introductions by the curatorial fellows. Each program will also be presented online for a week, free and worldwide, here on Connects. The programs will travel to the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, in November, with other tour dates TBD

Discovered at The Roxie Theater, San Francisco

October 2, 2022
Insurgent Articulations, curated by Ekin Pinar
Prime Time Reverie, curated by Aadita Aggarwal

October 16, 2022
Trajectories of Self-Determination: Experimental Cinema’s Embrace of Jazz, curated by Juan Carlos Kase
Playing in the Dark: Watery Experiments, curated by Chrystel Oloukoï

Streaming Schedule

October 2-8: Insurgent Articulations
October 9-15: Prime Time Reverie
October 16-22: Trajectories of Self-Determination
October 23-29: Playing in the Dark

Acknowledgments

Canyon Cinema Discovered is made possible with generous support by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, and the Owsley Brown III Philanthropic Foundation.

Thanks go to the Canyon Cinema Discovered curatorial fellows, Aaditya Aggarwal, Juan Carlos Kase, Ekin Pinar, and Chrystel Oloukoï, for their dedication, enthusiasm, and thoughtfulness through every step of this winding journey.

We are deeply indebted to all of the participating artists, and their representatives and distributors, for allowing us to include their work in this adventurous program.

This project would not have been possible without the essential guidance and expertise of Canyon Cinema’s Collection Manager, Seth Mitter, as well as the vision and care of Canyon’s previous Director, Antonella Bonfanti.

Our deep and heartfelt gratitude to all who supported and collaborated with us on the Canyon Cinema Discovered fellowship:

Canyon Cinema Foundation Board of Directors
Michael Renov (President), Jeffrey Skoller (Treasurer), Patricia Ledesma Villon (Secretary), Terri Francis, Brian L. Frye, Lian Ladia, Jonathan Marlow, Lynne Sachs, Steve Seid

Project Advisors
Christopher Harris, Steffanie Ling, Adam Piron, Lynne Sachs

Essay Editors
Max Goldberg, Girish Shambu, Dessane Lopez Cassell, Tess Takahashi

Guest Presenters
Pablo de Ocampo, Almudena Escobar López, Mark Toscano, Carmel Curtis, Daniella Shreir, Dessane Lopez Cassell

Special thanks to the following individuals and organizations for assistance and support: Serge Abiaad; Academy Film Archives; Anthology Film Archives; Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V.; Rachel Bers; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Buck Bito; Michael Blair; Antonella Bonfanti; Jesse Brossoit; Owsley Brown III; Sarah Burford; Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre; Cinémathèque québécoise; Coast Litho; Colorlab; Hanan Coumal; La Distributrice de films; Nicolas Dulac; Electronic Arts Intermix; Hatim Eujayl; Jackie Farrell; Isabel Fondevila; Walter Forsberg; Jooyoung Friedman-Buchanan; Melanie Isabel García; Amélie Garin-Davet; Haden Guest; Shawn Guthrie; Harvard Film Archives; Steven Hill; shah noor hussein; Mark Johnson; Finn Jubak; Hannah Kay; John Klacsmann; Léopold Lambert; Tanya Leighton Gallery; Peter Limbrick; David Lindblom; Veronica Luke; LUX; Edda Manriquez; Carl Martin; Karl McCool; Andrew McNeely; Media City Film Festival; Amanda Mendelsohn; Rebecca Meyers; Jennifer Moore; Morán Morán; Oona Mosna; Movette; the Museum of Modern Art; Dean Otto; Steve Polta; Inney Prakash; Prismatic Ground; Gregorio Rodríguez; AJ Rohner; Zack Rothauser; The Roxie Theater; Jon Shibata; Amy Sloper; Genne Speers; Marty Spellerberg/Spellerberg Associates; Margaret Sternbergh; Charlotte Strange; Andrew Tamburrino; Gaël Teicher; Steve Tom; Tina Tom; Mark Toscano; Katie Trainor; La Traverse; Helen Shewolfe Tseng; UCLA Film & Television Archive; Video Data Bank; Jeffrey Walkowiak; Todd Weiner; Alex Wen, Carsten Zimmer.