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178 pages

English

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In Binghamton Babylon, Scott M. MacDonald documents one of the crucial moments in the history of cinema studies: the emergence of a cinema department at what was then the State University of New York at Binghamton (now Binghamton University) between 1967 and 1977. The department brought together a group of faculty and students who not only produced a remarkable body of films and videos but went on to invigorate the American media scene for the next half-century. Drawing on interviews with faculty, students, and visiting artists, MacDonald weaves together an engaging conversation that explores the academic excitement surrounding the emergence of cinema as a viable subject of study in colleges and universities. The voices of the various participants—Steve Anker, Alan Berliner, Danny Fingeroth, Hollis Frampton, Ernie Gehr, J. Hoberman, Ralph Hocking, Ken Jacobs, Bill T. Jones, Peter Kubelka, Saul Levine, Camille Paglia, Phil Solomon, Maureen Turim, and many others—tell the story of this remarkable period. MacDonald concludes with an analysis of the pedagogical dimensions of the films that were produced in Binghamton, including Larry Gottheim's Horizons; Jacobs's Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son; Gehr's Serene Velocity; Frampton's Critical Mass; and Nicholas Ray's final film, We Can't Go Home Again.
Foreword by J. Hoberman
Preface

BINGHAMTON BABYLON (a nonfiction novel)

Introduction

The Voices

The Weave
    1. Emergence
    2. First Flush
    3. Maelstrom
    4. Collision
    5. New Directions
    6. Younger Colleagues and More Visitors
    7. Politics
    8. Denouncement

Appendix 1: “A Pedagogical Cinema”
Appendix 2: Ken Jacobs by Art Spiegelman

Acknowledgments
Index

Sujets

Histoire du cinéma

Cinéma

Cinema

Film

Electronic

History of film

Visual culture

History of art

Película fotográfica

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	31 août 2015
Nombre de lectures	2
EAN13	9781438458908
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	13 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1748€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Binghamton Babylon
Also in the series
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Frances Gateward, editor, Seoul Searching
Michael Atkinson, editor, Exile Cinema
Paul S. Moore, Now Playing
Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann, Ecology and Popular Film
William Rothman, editor, Three Documentary Filmmakers
Sean Griffin, editor, Hetero
Jean-Michel Frodon, editor, Cinema and the Shoah
Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Constantine Verevis, editors, Second Takes
Matthew Solomon, editor, Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination
R. Barton Palmer and David Boyd, editors, Hitchcock at the Source
William Rothman, Hitchcock, Second Edition
Joanna Hearne, Native Recognition
Marc Raymond, Hollywood’s New Yorker
Steven Rybin and Will Scheibel, editors, Lonely Places, Dangerous Ground
Claire Perkins and Constantine Verevis, editors, B Is for Bad Cinema
Dominic Lennard, Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors
Rosie Thomas, Bombay before Bollywood
Binghamton Babylon
Voices from the Cinema Department, 1967–1977
(a non-fiction novel)

Scott M. MacDonald
Foreword by
J. Hoberman
Cover: Frames from the film Serene Velocity courtesy of Ernie Gehr.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Ryan Morris
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
MacDonald, Scott M.
Binghamton Babylon : voices from the cinema department, 1967–1977 / Scott M. MacDonald ; foreword by J. Hoberman.
pages cm. — (SUNY series, horizons of cinema)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5889-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5888-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5890-8 (e-book)
1. State University of New York at Binghamton. Cinema Department. 2. Motion pictures—Study and teaching (Higher)—New York (State)—Binghamton. I. Hoberman, J. II. Title. PN1993.8.U5S75 2015 791.43071'174775—dc23 2015001355
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
With the recovery of Babylonian independence, a new era of architectural activity ensued, and … Nebuchadnezzar II (604–561 BC) made Babylon into one of the wonders of the ancient world. Nebuchadnezzar ordered the complete reconstruction of the imperial grounds, including rebuilding the Etemenanki ziggurat and the construction of the Ishtar Gate—the most spectacular of eight gates that ringed the perimeter of Babylon…. All that was ever found of the original Ishtar gate was the foundation and scattered bricks.
—From a 2013 Wikipedia entry on Babylon
Contents
Foreword by J. Hoberman
Preface
BINGHAMTON BABYLON (a nonfiction novel)
Introduction
The Voices
The Weave
1. Emergence
2. First Flush
3. Maelstrom
4. Collision
5. New Directions
6. Younger Colleagues and More Visitors
7. Politics
8. Denouement
Appendix 1: “A Pedagogical Cinema”
Appendix 2: Ken Jacobs by Art Spiegelman
Acknowledgments
Index
Foreword
J. H OBERMAN
Binghamton Babylon; Binghamton, My India; Binghamton Confidential: For me, the State University of New York at Binghamton aka Harpur College was the High Sixties (sex, drugs, confusion), culminating in the life-changing creation of the Cinema Department orchestrated by lit-prof-turned-filmmaker Larry Gottheim and the Big Bang arrival of the film artist Ken Jacobs.
I came to Binghamton in the fall of 1966, because, like many kids who might otherwise have gone to one of New York City’s then free colleges, I had won a Regents Scholarship—tuition cost but $200 a semester—and because a girl I dated in high school was there as well. If the institutional red brick Harpur campus looked a bit like a housing development to this son of Queens, there was nothing familiar about the Triple Cities of Binghamton, Endicott, and Johnson City, and the surrounding Southern Tier. To call this place exotic was to say the least.
Binghamton was the back of beyond, the end of the world. We heard that Senator Robert F. Kennedy had obtained federal aid by making it the northernmost part of Appalachia, and that in the 1930s, when the Communist Party wanted to exile someone they sent them up here to organize the Endicott Johnson shoe factories. It was only a few miles from campus to the site of the 1957 Mafia summit called the Apalachin Meeting and less than an hour’s drive to the remote Pennsylvania farmhouse where the fugitive Patty Hearst would later lie low during the summer of 1974. So many legends! But mainly, as Scott MacDonald makes clear, Binghamton was a unique environment for the study of cinema, the avant-garde American Film Institute of an alternative universe. Professor MacDonald’s understanding of what he has most astutely identified as “pedagogical film” and the way that it developed on the Southern Tier is lucid and illuminating.
Not that I can be objective. Reading Scott’s book I was moved, chastened, startled, and intensely grateful. A huge chunk of my life flashed (or perhaps erupted) before my eyes. I relived my own youthful enthusiasm, idiocy, and emotional tumult. It was a revelation to learn what other people had been thinking then and what they remembered of it now—not to mention the amazing stuff that happened after I left Binghamton (under a cloud) and returned to New York in the spring of 1971, the semester before Nicholas Ray appeared on the scene. In the tapestry of voices, gathered and tightly woven by Scott, I reexperienced epic events that I had seen and heard and almost forgotten—the epochal screening of Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason , the appearance of Hermann Nitsch’s Orgien Mysterien Theater , the stormy world premiere of Hollis Frampton’s Critical Mass , the indescribable adventures of “Mr. Radio Man,” the gestation of the Collective for Living Cinema, and more.
Binghamton Babylon brought Binghamton back to me but, in a sense, I never left the place. I am still friendly with Ken and Flo Jacobs, with Steve Anker and Ernie Gehr and a half-dozen other Harpur veterans. I am still married to Shelley Katowitz, whom I met there. I am still writing film notes and still (though a senior citizen) trying to understand just what it was that I experienced as a twenty-year-old projectionist in Lecture Hall 6.
—New York City, May 2014
Preface
The cover of the Summer 2007 Binghamton University Magazine touts caricatures (by Bill Cigliano) of Binghamton graduates writer/producer/director Marc Lawrence, class of 1981 (whose writing credits include Miss Congeniality , 2000; and Miss Congeniality 2 , 2005); the actor/comedian Paul Reiser ’77 (star of the television series Mad About You , 1992–1999); and actor Billy Baldwin ’85—drawing the reader’s attention to “That’s Entertainment,” inside the issue (subtitle: “Alumni in the film field have the track records to prove it’s possible to thrive in this competitive, ever-changing arena”) by staff writer Tamar Morad. “That’s Entertainment” includes a more elaborate set of caricatures featuring Reiser again, front and center, and in the near foreground, Marc Lawrence, Billy Baldwin, and film critic J. Hoberman ’71 (holding a copy of the Village Voice ). Toward the rear of the image, on the right, are caricatures of filmmaker Alan Berliner ’77 and in the way-back, a tiny image of longtime Binghamton film professor, Ken Jacobs. 1 As one might expect, “That’s Entertainment” is focused on the struggles and rewards of having a career in commercial media and implicitly suggests that a Binghamton University education must be at least adequate training for such a career. (See fig. 1 .)
“That’s Entertainment” also includes a sidebar, “The epicenter of experimental film”: a photograph of the Collective for Living Cinema, which served the New York City cinema scene from 1973 to 1992, is accompanied by comments by Ken Jacobs, Alan Berliner, Dan Eisenberg ’76, Steve Anker ’72, and one of the founders of the Collective, Ken Ross ’73. Morad suggests that the “novelty of experimental film waned in the late 1970s,” but he quotes Steve Anker, then the Dean of the School of Film and Video at CalArts, to the effect that “independent film has become an accepted part of film culture.” Though this brief puff piece relegates Binghamton University’s contribution to the evolution of independent cinema to a sidebar, Morad can hardly be faulted, since this balance of attention is anything but unusual; indeed, given the way most colleges and universities privilege financial success, he can be congratulated for including any mention of the major thread in the tapestry of film history that has been least financiall