The closing of the San Francisco Arts Institute was devastating for many of us who were connected to it as teachers, students, staff, artists, alums, visitors and community members. Many groundbreaking creative and intellectual experiences that the SFAI supported influenced arts cultures not just locally, but nationally and internationally. Every engagement with SFAI for me was memorable. When teaching there, I would pass George Kuchar down the hallway, chit chat a bit, and then head into our classrooms. Our classrooms comprised of students from all over the world, of varying ages and disciplines. Freedom and creativity were most prized, something we desperately need to rebuild today in our education systems and pedagogical approaches.

This is where the SFAI LF+A comes in, to look back at the artistic and cultural wealth that flourished at the SFAI in our efforts to rebuild arts cultures that are beyond answering to the marketplace. For futurist researchers, see: https://www.sfailegacyarchive.org/research.html

A talk of mine at that is archived here is titled “Too Experimental, Too Much Content” and it was about the discoveries and challenges of working as an experimental documentary filmmaker. I showed clips from One Hundred Eggs a Minute, Imagining Place, She Wants to Talk to You, and the work-in-progress 62 Years and 6500 Miles Between, and for each, I talked about the challenges of categorization, funding, writing about one’s works in grant applications, artistic integrity and independence, adaptability, pushing your craft, working with funders, documentary’s political possibilities, and documentary aesthetics defined by filmmaker and subject relationships. SFAI lectures provided the much needed time to actively engage with the audience, conversations that helped with my practice over the years.