Jodi Wille is an American film director, curator, and book publisher known for her work exploring American subcultures.
Jodi Wille is an American film director, curator, and book publisher known for her work exploring American subcultures.
Wille directed and produced The Source Family (2012), her first feature-length documentary, with Maria Demopoulos. The film explores the story of the eponymous Los Angeles utopian commune and its charismatic leader, Father Yod. The Source Family premiered in competition at South by Southwest Film Festival and screened in competition at several major film festivals. The film was released theatrically to 60 cities in May 2013. [1] [2]
Wille's second film, Welcome Space Brothers (2023), is a feature documentary about the Unarius Academy of Science, an extraterrestrial-channeling spiritual school and self-healing community in Southern California that in the late 70s became a prolific filmmaking collective under the direction of outlandish spiritual leader Ruth Norman, AKA Archangel Uriel. The film's executive producers include Elijah Wood and Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Welcome Space Brothers premiered in November 2023 at Beyond Fest, the largest genre film festival in the United States. The film was the first feature documentary ever to world premiere at the festival. The film premiered internationally at Melbourne International Film Festival in August of 2024. [3] [4]
In 1994, R.E.M. gave Wille her first paid directing gig for their "Find the River" music video. [5] Signed to DNA (David Naylor & Associates), she directed a number of music videos in the mid-90s. Wille worked prior to that as assistant to music video and commercial director Samuel Bayer and later as assistant and development consultant to feature film director Roland Joffé. [6]
Throughout the 90s, Wille also worked as a commercial and documentary photographer, shooting billboard campaigns, rock bands and personalities including Sparks (band), Melissa Etheridge, and Vincent Gallo, while also documenting visionary artists and alternative spiritual communities.
In 1998, Wille co-founded Dilettante Press with Steve Nalepa, Nick Rubenstein, and Hedi El Kholti, a publishing house with a focus on self-taught, visionary, and vernacular art and photography. [5] Dilettante published only three titles, but "their impact was considerable." [7] Dilettante produced exhibitions, symposiums, and parties related to their books in galleries and museums in multiple cities in the U.S. and in Europe.
In 2005, Wille founded Process Media with her then-partner (later, husband) Adam Parfrey of Feral House. The imprint focuses on non-fiction, literary memoirs, and illustrated books exploring subcultures and groundbreaking artists such as Andy Kaufman, Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, John Sinclair and MC5, Father Yod and Ya Ho Wha 13, and Moondog. [8] Process has also created a "Self-Reliance Series" of illustrated guide books that promote sustainable and self-sufficient living.
In 2000, Wille, Hedi El Kholti, and Cheryl Dunn co-curated the first exhibition of the work of amateur photographer Gary Lee Boas, "Starstruck: Photographs from Fan", at Deitch Projects. [9] [10] This led to exhibitions at galleries and museums in the U.S. and throughout Europe including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, The Photographers' Gallery in London, and Galerie Kamel Mennour in Paris.
In 2013, Wille was named as co-curator with Rebecca Alban Hoffberger of the American Visionary Art Museum exhibition The Visionary Experience: St. Francis to Finster, a 44-artist, 244-works exhibition which ran 2014-2015. [11]
Since 2014, Wille has curated several exhibitions of photographs, art, costumes, and ephemera produced by the extraterrestrial-channeling spiritual school Unarius Academy of Science, including a 2016 exhibition at the London arts venue The Horse Hospital, [12] works in The Visionary Experience exhibition at American Visionary Art Museum, a 2016 exhibition at The Standard Hotel Hollywood, and at the 2017 Basilisk exhibition at Nicodim Gallery in Los Angeles. [13] [14]
Over the years, Wille has programmed films and curated cultural events in several cities. [15] [16] [17] From 2007-2017, Wille served as a regular guest programmer at The Cinefamily cinematheque in Los Angeles, hosting the popular "Occult LA" series and other programs including an eclectic range of guests from Kris Kristofferson, Tony Clifton, Rocky Erickson, and Tom Laughlin to white witches, Hare Krishnas, and Bigfoot researchers, as well as live music, ritual performance, panels, and art exhibitions. [18] [19] [20] [21] [22]
In 2015, Wille presented a retrospective of the films of the Unarius Academy of Science at Cinefamily, which included a Unariun art and artifact exhibition and Unariun workshops. [23] This led to invitations to present Unarius films at the 2015 San Francisco International Film Festival and the Horse Hospital arts center in London. [24] [25]
The National Science and Media Museum, located in Bradford, West Yorkshire, is part of the national Science Museum Group in the UK. The museum has seven floors of galleries with permanent exhibitions focusing on photography, television, animation, videogaming, the Internet and the scientific principles behind light and colour. It also hosts temporary exhibitions and maintains a collection of 3.5 million pieces in its research facility.
Visionaire is a company based in New York City that creates films, experiences, and events in addition to an eponymous publication that intersect art, fashion, film, and contemporary culture across multiple platforms. Artists and designers often work in collaboration with Visionaire to produce interpretations on a theme.
Adam Parfrey was an American journalist, editor, and the publisher of Feral House books, whose work in all three capacities frequently centered on unusual, extreme, or "forbidden" topics. A 2010 Seattle Weekly profile stated that "what Parfrey does is publish books that explore the marginal aspects of culture. And in many cases—at least back when his interests were almost exclusively transgressive—he sheds light on subjects that society prefers to leave unexplored, carving a niche catering to those of us with an unseemly obsession with life's darkest, most depraved sides."
Nicholas David Gordon Knight is a British fashion photographer and founder and director of SHOWstudio.com. He is an honorary professor at University of the Arts London and was awarded an honorary Ph.D. by the same university. He has produced books of his work including retrospectives Nicknight (1994) and Nick Knight (2009). In 2016, Knight's 1992 campaign photograph for fashion brand Jil Sander was sold by Phillips auction house at the record-breaking price of HKD 2,360,000.
Fata Morgana is a 1971 film by Werner Herzog, shot in 1968 and 1969, which captures mirages in the Sahara and Sahel deserts. Herzog also wrote the narration by Lotte H. Eisner, which recounts the Mayan creation myth, the Popol Vuh.
Lili Haydn is a Canadian-born rock violinist, vocalist, actress, and composer. As a child, she pursued a career as an actress; at age eight she discovered the violin and began to focus on classical music. By the time Haydn was 15, she had played with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Process Media is an independent publishing house started in 2005 in Los Angeles by Adam Parfrey of Feral House and Jodi Wille of Dilettante Press, and headquartered in Port Townsend.
Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer and artist known for his large format photographs of industrial landscapes. His works depict locations from around the world that represent the increasing development of industrialization and its impacts on nature and the human existence. It is most often connected to the philosophical concept of the sublime, a trait established by the grand scale of the work he creates, though they are equally disturbing in the way they reveal the context of rapid industrialization.
Father Yod, or YaHoWha, born James Edward Baker, was an American new religious movement founder and owner of one of the country's first health food restaurants, on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. He founded a spiritual commune in the Hollywood Hills known as the Source Family. The Source Family was heavily influenced by the teachings of Yogi Bhajan and the astrological age of Aquarius. The Family practiced communal living in Southern California and later in Hawaii. He was also the frontman of the commune's experimental psychedelic rock band, Ya Ho Wha 13.
Michèle Pearson Clarke is a Trinidadian filmmaker and photographer based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Ya Ho Wha 13, otherwise known as Ya Ho Wa 13 or Yahowha 13, is a psychedelic rock band fronted by Father Yod, spiritual leader of a religious commune called the Source Family, based in Los Angeles.. The band has released nine LPs of psychedelic music, with tribal drums and distorted guitars. Some were unrehearsed jam sessions and others conventional rock music.
Earl Kemp was an American publisher, science fiction editor, critic, and fan who won a Hugo Award for Best Fanzine in 1961 for Who Killed Science Fiction, a collection of questions and answers with top writers in the field. Kemp also helped found Advent:Publishers, a small publishing house focused on science fiction criticism, history, and bibliography, and served as chairman of the 20th World Science Fiction Convention. During the 1960s and '70s, Kemp was also involved in publishing a number of erotic paperbacks, including an illustrated edition of the Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. This publication led to Kemp being sentenced to one year in prison for "conspiracy to mail obscene material," but he served only the federal minimum of three months and one day.
Timothy Alistair Telemachus Hetherington was a British photojournalist. He produced books, films and other work that "ranged from multi-screen installations, to fly-poster exhibitions, to handheld device downloads" and was a regular contributor to Vanity Fair.
The Cinefamily was a non-profit cinematheque located in Beverly Grove, Los Angeles, at the historic Silent Movie Theatre. The Cinefamily's mission statement was to "reinvigorate the movie-going experience by fostering a spirit of community and a sense of discovery."
The Source Family is a 2012 feature documentary film directed by Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos which recounts the story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13 and the Source Family. Much material was gleaned from Isis Aquarian's archives of photos, diary, film, cassette tapes of Father Yod's morning class, lost music tapes, graphics; along with input interviews of Source family members and people who knew Jim Baker and / or went to the Source Restaurant.
Neil Breen is an American filmmaker and actor. Since 2005, he has written, directed, independently produced, and starred in six theatrical feature films. Breen's films have garnered a cult following for their low-budget production values, acting, writing, and editing.
Daniel Joel Tull is a contemporary American painter, sculptor and musician who lives and works in Los Angeles.
Veronica Gonzalez Peña is an American writer and filmmaker, and is a faculty member at Stetson University, Florida.
Alia Penner is a Los Angeles–based artist, whose work is predominantly modern pop art, and film curator.
Yohan Manca is a French film director, writer, actor and producer. He is best known for his work on the film, My Brothers and I.
