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| Address | 361 Stagg Street, Suite 407 Brooklyn, New York United States |
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| Coordinates | 40°42′39″N73°56′3″W / 40.71083°N 73.93417°W |
| Type | Microcinema |
| Opened | 2008 |
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Light Industry is an American microcinema founded by Ed Halter and Thomas Beard. Since 2008 it has operated in several locations around Brooklyn, New York. Its programming focuses on obscure and unusual works.
Halter and Beard met through the New York Underground Film Festival, which Halter ran. [1] They started Light Industry in 2008, inspired by Amos Vogel who ran the Cinema 16 film society and co-founded the New York Film Festival. [2] After opening in Industry City, they moved to a storefront in Downtown Brooklyn and later offered itinerant programming at other venues such as Anthology Film Archives and ISSUE Project Room. [3]
Light Industry found a new permanent location in Greenpoint in 2011. The space had a simple design, with folding chairs and a small projection screen. They eventually built a wooden projection booth named after director Chantal Akerman, who had previously criticized the layout when presenting a film by Michael Snow. [2] Halter and Beard co-curated film and video programs for the 2012 Whitney Biennial. [4]
In 2017 Light Industry partnered with Anthology Film Archives to republish Stan Brakhage's Metaphors on Vision, with annotations by P. Adams Sitney. [5] In 2020 they republished Michael Snow's 1975 artist's book Cover to Cover with Primary Information. [6] Beard turned the back room into Monday Night Books, a pop-up store for secondhand books. [7]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Light Industry established the Cinema Worker Solidarity Fund with Screen Slate to provide financial assistance for local theater workers. [2] It had its final show at the Greenpoint location in April 2023, before reopening shortly after in Williamsburg. [8]
Light Industry generally holds one screening each week, specializing in obscure and unusual works. [1] Its programming draws from many artistic scenes that may otherwise have distinct audiences, such as avant-garde film, underground film, international art film, video art, and new media. [4] Light Industry has often programmed works of queer cinema, which Halter described as understanding "the inestimable value of spaces that allow like-minded people to come together for a shared experience, a shared understanding." [2]
Dog Star Man is a series of short experimental films, all directed by Stan Brakhage, featuring Jane Wodening. It was released in instalments between 1961 and 1964 and comprises a prelude and four parts. In 1992, Dog Star Man was included in its entirety in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and recommended for preservation.
James Stanley Brakhage was an American filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film.
Drawn-on-film animation, also known as direct animation or animation without camera, is an animation technique where footage is produced by creating the images directly on film stock, as opposed to any other form of animation where the images or objects are photographed frame by frame with an animation camera.
Greenpoint is the northernmost neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, in the U.S. state of New York. It is bordered on the southwest by Williamsburg at Bushwick Inlet Park and McCarren Park; on the southeast by the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway and East Williamsburg; on the north by Newtown Creek and the neighborhood of Long Island City in Queens; and on the west by the East River. The neighborhood has a large Polish immigrant and Polish-American community, containing many Polish restaurants, markets, and businesses, and it is often referred to as Little Poland.
An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre or financing.
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources.
Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema. The film archive and theater is located at 32 Second Avenue on the southeast corner of East 2nd Street, in a New York City historic district in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan.
Structural film was an avant-garde experimental film movement prominent in the United States in the 1960s and which developed into the Structural/materialist films in the United Kingdom in the 1970s.
Ron Rice was an American experimental filmmaker, whose free-form style influenced experimental filmmakers in New York and California during the early 1960s.
Marie Menken was an American experimental filmmaker, painter, and socialite. She was noted for her unique filming style that incorporated collage. She was one of the first New York filmmakers to use a hand-held camera and trained Andy Warhol on its use. Her film Glimpse of the Garden was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Mothlight is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage, released in 1963. The film was created without the use of a camera.
Philip Stewart Solomon was an American experimental filmmaker noted for his work with both film and video. In recent years, Solomon had earned acclaim for a series of films that incorporate machinima made using games from the Grand Theft Auto series. His films are often described as haunting and lyrical.
The Millennium Film Workshop is a non-profit media arts center located in New York City. It is dedicated to the exhibition, study, and practice of avant-garde and experimental cinema. It was also where the St. Mark's Poetry Project began. Ken Jacobs stated in 2013 that he chose the name Millennium "...because it would have to be that to actually give out equipment, education, space to work in, etc. for free. Dictionary definition: 'A hoped for period of joy, serenity, prosperity and justice.' "
The Dante Quartet is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage, completed in 1987. The film was inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, and took six years to produce.
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.
Betzy Bromberg is an American director, editor, and experimental filmmaker. She was the Director of the Program in Film and Video at California Institute of the Arts, and remains in the position of full time Faculty. Her work has been shown at the Rotterdam, London, Edinburgh, Sundance and Vancouver Film Festivals as well as the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the San Francisco Cinematheque, the Harvard Film Archive (Cambridge), Anthology Film Archives, the National Film Theater (London), The Vootrum Centrum (Belgium) and the Centre Georges Pompidou (France).
American artist Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) is justifiably best known for his boxes which constitute a singular contribution to the Surrealist canon and to the art of assemblage. However, he also pursued experimental film-making as an amateur beginning in the 1930s. Cornell was the principal pioneer of collage films in a purely artistic sense and, although the introduction of his films into the public forum was relatively late compared to when they were made, his work as a filmmaker has been widely influential.
Ed Halter is a film programmer, writer, and founder of Light Industry, a microcinema in Brooklyn, New York. He currently teaches at Bard College, where he is Critic in Residence.
Anticipation of the Night is a 1958 American avant-garde film directed by Stan Brakhage. It was a breakthrough in the development of the lyrical style Brakhage used in his later films.
The Way to Shadow Garden is a 1955 American experimental film directed by Stan Brakhage.
