Career summary for Hollis Frampton
(approximately 1973)
My preparation for film-making was in still photography. The first work in film was done in the Fall of 1962; during the next four years, the emphasis of my work shifted gradually from still photography to cinema. The first work in film that I now allow to be seen was made in the Spring of 1966; since that time, I have done little work in photography...and always in perceptual areas analogous to those of film.
Since 1962, I have completed more than 40 films, with a total running time in excess of twenty hours, working largely in color and, with increasing frequency, in sound. My work has been shown in universities, museums and festivals throughout the United States and western Europe, and is represented in collections here and abroad, notably those of The Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Institute Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, Anthology Film Archives, the German Film Archive (Berlin), and the Centre Beaubourg (Paris). The Royal Film Archive of Belgium preserves the entire body of my work to date. My film ZORNS LEMMA (1970) was the first experimental work of feature length to be included in the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. I have been tendered full retrospective screenings by the Walker Art Center (1972), The Museum of Modern Art (1973), the Fifth International Festival of Experimental Film, Knokke-Heist, Belgium (1974), and Anthology Film Archives (1975).
My current practical work and theoretical studies isolate and rehearse problems related to a massive, serial work-in-progress, the film-cycle MAGELLAN, which involves, in addition to a lexicon of procedures and tropes classically proper to cinema, work in video and optical image-synthesis and manipulation; electronic synthesis and modification of sound; and the generation of certain graphic and auditory elements by digital computer. This work must occupy the center of my creative attention for some time.
During the past four years, I have begun a body of theoretical and critical writing on still photography, film and video which has found publication in Artforum, New York, and elsewhere. The scenario of one film, POETIC JUSTICE (1972), was published in book form, in November 1973, by Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester.
From 1960 through 1968, I worked as a technician in film laboratories, specializing in dye-imbibition color processes, with a view to acquiring a complete knowledge of the materials and processes of cinema. In 1969, I joined the faculty of the Department of Art, Hunter College, CUNY, where I taught still photography, design and filmmaking until 1973. During that time, I also held positions as Visiting Lecturer in the history of film at The Cooper Union and the School of Visual Arts, New York. In September, 1973, I accepted an appointment as Associate Professor in the Center for Media Study, SUNY at Buffalo, where my responsibilties include the teaching of film-making and the history and theory of film, and the design of a radically innovative university program on both undergraduate and graduate levels.
