Through archival footage, photographs and extensive interviews with avant-garde film luminaries, Brigid Maher’s loving bio-doc Experimental Curator: The Sally Dixon Story tells the tale of an undersung hero of the avant-garde, visionary film curator Sally Dixon (1932–2019), documenting her early immersion in the 1960s New York film scene through a career of supporting artists and creating community.

Join us for a special screening of the documentary film, preceded by three works featured in the film. Filmmaker Brigid Maher joins in person for a conversation and Q&A after the screenings.

Following a passionate engagement with the heady milieu of the 1960s New York underground film scene, Sally Dixon (1932–2019) dedicated her life to cultivating avant-garde film community through friendship, advocacy and visionary curatorial work. As founder, curator and administrator (1970–1975) of the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Film Section series, Dixon presented, commissioned and supported ground-breaking works by a huge array of filmmakers—including Carolee Schneemann, Gunvor Nelson, Stan Brakhage, Roger Jacoby, George & Mike Kuchar, Hollis Frampton, Storm De Hirsch and many others—while setting an exemplary model for the presentation of artist films in a fine arts context and for providing financial compensation to artists. Her establishment of the famed Pittsburgh Travel Sheet (in 1973) and role in founding the Filmmakers Preview Network and of Pittsburgh Filmmakers helped solidify a national touring network of alternative exhibition spaces and film artists. In her later career, Dixon programmed films at the Walker Art Center—where she published the famed Filmmakers Filming series of artist monographs—and worked for various philanthropic foundations, providing thousands of dollars in support of filmmaker projects.

Long under-recognized as a figure in the field, Dixon’s tale is told in Brigid Maher’s Experimental Curator: The Sally Dixon Story, a loving portrait featuring extensive archival footage, interviews and photographs documenting Dixon’s life and work and interviews with members of Dixon’s extensive circle including Jonas Mekas, Jane Brakhage Wodening, Carolee Schneemann, Ken Jacobs and more. The screening of Experimental Curator is preceded by three works featured in the film—James Broughton’s Erogeny (1976), filmed on Dixon’s dining room table; Roger Jacoby’s Dream Sphinx (1974), “starring” Dixon and Warhol superstar Ondine; and Storm De Hersh’s double-projected Third Eye Butterfly (1968), all screened in vibrant 16mm. (Steve Polta, San Francisco Cinematheque)

Dream Sphinx (1974) by Roger Jacoby

Ondine and Sally Dixon "star" as ecstatic 19th century lovers in Jacoby's first home-processed film. Nickelodeon imagery, school children of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Botanical Conservatory. "As the strains of an aria rise, the grainy specks of Jacoby's self-processed film begin to darken and swim like fruit flies, lighting on the flowers in the garden, sticking to the lips of the lovers as they kiss." (Victoria Dalkey)

Erogeny (1976) by James Broughton

The film travels in close-up over the mysterious terrains of nude human bodies as they touch and explore one another. It is like an expedition into human geography, an intimate sculpture, an erogenous healing ceremony and an ode to the pleasures of touch. Also it is an homage to old friends, Willard Maas and Marie Menken, who made the first body poem in cinema history, Geography of the Body, in 1943. (James Broughton)

Third Eye Butterfly (1968) by Storm De Hirsch

For dual-projection. Where is the light coming from? The flavor of the colors are succulent to the long vision in the soul. How can dust cover the arrows of light? How can darkness favor oblivion in the face of light? The variations of soul-touch exist in the auras of illumination. The Great Eye dominates. (Storm De Hirsch)