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Thursday, January 09, 2003

By Caroline Abels, Post-Gazette Cultural Arts Writer

People who make, teach and exhibit film in Pittsburgh were stunned yesterday by the Carnegie Museum of Art's announcement that it was eliminating its venerated film and video department as a way to save money.

	Graphic: Museum layoffs

The shock was keenly felt at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, which Carnegie officials cited as one of a few Pittsburgh institutions that were duplicating the museum's independent and foreign film program.

"We didn't see each other as competitors but as part of the same movement to bring work to Pittsburgh that otherwise wouldn't be shown here," said Brady Lewis, Filmmakers' director of education.

Charlie Humphrey, executive director of Filmmakers, said the Carnegie's decision "has created a void, and we don't have the capacity to fill it."

The Carnegie often exhibited its films thematically, showing a number of works from the same country or by the same director over a period of time. Filmmakers, however, primarily exhibits films that are independent of each other and more widely available in America.

Bill Judson, curator of the film and video department since 1975, agreed yesterday that his programming was very different from Filmmakers', saying: "If you see one Iranian film about a woman, that's just one film, but if you see two or three Iranian films about women, you sit up and say, 'Wow, I didn't know it was like that.' "

It remains to be seen whether the foreign university students and descendants of immigrants who often attended the international films at the Carnegie will be able to enjoy elsewhere the same level of connection with the cinematic work of their home countries.

The film program had become one of the major forums for international issues and culture in the city, said John Beverley, chair of the Spanish department at Pitt.

"I think it's going to be a real loss in that respect, not only for the university community but the business community, as well, and the international minority groups in the area like Poles and Hungarians that could see films from their own country presented," Beverley said.

Lucy Fischer, director of the film studies program at the University of Pittsburgh, called the Carnegie's program a premier venue for seeing international, independent and avant-garde films and, with the Carnegie International, one of the two distinguishing and most progressive aspects of the museum.

The film program represented 20th and 21st century art, and to cut it "feels like a very conservative move" that will feed into the stereotype of Pittsburgh as a place that's "not a forward-thinking, cutting-edge city," Fischer said.

Judson's program attracted national attention, especially in its formative years, when he would exhibit the kind of underground and experimental film that was looked at suspiciously by the mainstream but is now considered groundbreaking.

John Hanhardt, senior curator of film and media arts at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, called Judson "an extraordinary curator and scholar" who "has done great work with installations as well as thematic programming that looks at the history of the moving image."

That history is essential for art museums to address, Hanhardt said, since "to understand what is happening in art, you have to understand the moving image."

Most major art museums have film and video programs, said Daniel Schott, program director at the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture in San Francisco. But he added that many film and video programs that are members of NAMAC have told Schott they struggle to get money, resources and recognition from their museum bosses.

"Since it's such a young field, there's still a resistance to thinking of it as an art form," Schott said.

Hanhardt was not surprised that the Carnegie was facing budget woes, but he was surprised by how the museum decided to save money.

"One expects there to be cutbacks [at museums today] but one doesn't expect there to be vulnerability for a program that has such a long history and is obviously providing so much to its city," he said.