The Department of Film presents a book signing and film screening to mark the recent publication of Scott MacDonald’s Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor (University of California Press, 2008). The evening is dedicated to the memory of Canyon Cinema cofounder and seminal artist Bruce Conner, who died in July.
MacDonald’s lively, often first-person account uses interviews, poetry, experimental writing, drawings, and cartoons to capture a remarkable moment in American cultural history. In the 1960s, in the San Francisco Bay area, a small, backyard film exhibition and distribution collective emerged, eventually establishing itself as a major force in the development of independent cinema. MacDonald catches the spirit and changing times at Canyon Cinema, which was as influential and idiosyncratic as the filmmakers who ran it. The author signs copies of his book and introduces a selection of films by some of the founders and early driving forces of Canyon Cinema.
Organized by Jytte Jensen, Curator, Department of Film, with grateful thanks to Dominic Angerame, Director, Canyon Cinema.