The Film-Makers' Cooperative


The Film-Makers' Cooperative is an artist-run, non-profit organization founded in 1961 in New York City by Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, Shirley Clarke, Stan Brakhage, Jack Smith, Lionel Rogosin, Gregory Markopoulos, Lloyd Michael Williams, and other filmmakers, for the distribution, education, and exhibition of avant-garde films and alternative media.
WWW film-makerscoop.com

History

In the fall of 1960, Jonas Mekas and Lewis Allen organized several meetings with independent filmmakers in New York City that culminated on September 28, 1960, with the group officially declaring themselves the "New American Cinema Group."
On January 7, 1961, at a contentious meeting of the Group, Amos Vogel attempted to stonewall the formation of the distribution center, claiming that his own Cinema 16 organization should be the only distributor of experimental films. However, Vogel was shouted down after it was pointed out that Cinema 16 refused to distribute Stan Brakhage's Anticipation of the Night.
On September 30, 1962, Mekas presented the first draft of a manifesto for the New American Cinema Group, which included a call to form a cooperative distribution center. An excerpt from the manifesto reads:
In 1966, coop founders started the Film-makers’ Distribution Center, a sister organization for theatrical release.

About

The Film-Makers' Cooperative holds a large collection of avant-garde and experimental films, with over 6,000 titles by more than 2,500 filmmakers and media artists. The collection includes work created on 35mm, 16mm, Super 8mm, 8mm, video, and digital formats. The Cooperative rents out the films in its collection to cinématheques, film festivals, schools, universities, museums, and other art institutions in the United States and around the world.
Based upon a belief common to the founding members that the "official cinema is running out of breath" and has become "morally corrupt, aesthetically obsolete, thematically superficial, temperamentally boring", the Film-Makers' Cooperative was a key institution in the heyday of American experimental and underground film in the 1960s and 1970s, and has continued to operate on a non-exclusive basis to ensure the existence of an alternative, non-commercial film culture since then. As a result, the Cooperative is open to anyone who wishes to become a member.
The Film-Makers' Cooperative has inspired similar initiatives both within the United States and abroad.
Besides distributing its members' films, the Film-Makers' Cooperative is continuously involved in film preservation and home media release projects, and in arranging screenings and events in and around New York City. In 2020, the Cooperative expanded its distribution to online video on demand programs, including panels with filmmakers and media artists.

Directors and Board Members

Founding Director: Jonas Mekas
Executive Director: Tom Day
Members of the Board:
  • Emily Singer, President
  • Julia Curl, Vice President
  • Gregg Biermann
  • Eduardo Darino
  • KJ Rothweiler
  • David Schwartz
  • Cody Simons
Advisory Board:

Notable artists

Notable artists and filmmakers in the collection of the Film-Makers' Cooperative: