PHIL SOLOMON (M.F.A. Massachusetts College of Art) is an internationally recognized filmmaker and has been teaching both film history/aesthetics and film production at CU since 1991. Professor Solomon’s work has been screened in every major venue for experimental film throughout the U.S. and Europe, including 3 Cineprobes (one-man shows) at the Museum of Modern Art and two Whitney Biennials. Professor Solomon’s films have won 10 first prize awards at major international film festivals for experimental film (including six Juror’s Awards from the Black Maria Film and Video Festival). His films reside in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Massachusetts College of Art, Binghamton University, Hampshire College, The Chicago Art Institute, San Francisco State University, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and the Oberhausen Film Collection. Professor Solomon collaborated on three films with his colleague and friend, Stan Brakhage, who named Solomon’s Remains to be Seen on his Top Ten Films of All Time for Sight and Sound. Professor Solomon is currently working on a feature length series of short films entitled The Twilight Psalms, a cine-poem of the 20th century, and a commission from the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. to create a six- channel digital installation entitled American Falls, currently scheduled to open in the Corcoran rotunda in April 2010. In 2007, Phil Solomon embarked on an award winning series of digital videos culled from the video game GRAND THEFT AUTO entitled IN MEMORIAM, MARK LAPORE, which was named in the Top Ten experimental films of the year by the Village Voice. He has also begun work on a book entitled A Snail’s Trail in the Moonlight: Conversations with Brakhage, transcriptions of several years of Brakhage’s film salons.

In recognition of his film art, Philip Solomon was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1993), a Creative Capital Grant (2000, 2001), The Thatcher Hoffman Smith Award (2007), The Stan Brakhage Vision Award from the Denver International Film Festival (2007) and the Boulder Faculty Assembly Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Work (2008). ~ LIGHT CONE  distribution, promotion and preservation of experimental cinema

Lynne Sachs is an experimental filmmaker and poet living in Brooklyn, New York. Over the last four decades, she has created cinematic works that defy genre through the use of hybrid forms and cross-disciplinary collaboration, incorporating elements of the essay film, documentary, performance, and collage. Her films explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences. Working from a feminist perspective, she investigates connections between the body, the camera, and the materiality of film itself. Sachs uses letters, archives, diaries, poetry and music, to take us on a critical journey through reality and memory. Sachs’s films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art, Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Walker, and at New York Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, Punto de Vista, Rotterdam, and DocLisboa. Retrospectives of her work have been presented at Museum of the Moving Image, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, Cork Film Festival, China Women’s Film Festival, and Costa Rica Int’l Festival de Cine. Both the Edison Film Festival and the Prismatic Ground Film Festival awarded Lynne for her body of work in the experimental and documentary fields. Tender Buttons Press published Lynne’s first book Year by Year Poems.

Tara Merenda Nelson is a filmmaker, curator, programmer and lecturer working between material, conceptual and perceptual realms with small gauge film and digital media. Her films, videos and installations have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art (NY and Miami), Mono No Aware (Brooklyn), The 8Fest (Canada), VideoEx (Switzerland) and the Sydney Underground Film Festival (AUS). She has taught digital media and film production courses at Montserrat, Ithaca College, Cornell University, University of Rochester and SUNY Brockport. Currently she is the Curator and Director of Public Programs at Visual Studies Workshop, where she teaches 16mm film production and oversees a collection of over 10,000 16mm films and magnetic media titles. Tara is also the Programmer for the VSW Salon series. She holds an MFA in Film/Video from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Tara currently resides in Rochester NY with her husband Gordon and dog Lucy.

Shawn Cotter is an experimental handmade filmmaker whose Super 8mm films have shown internationally. Shawn currently lives in Malden, MA with his four cats and counts among his favorite filmmakers Joe Gage, Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, RW Fassbinder, Douglas Sirk, Kenneth Anger, Wong Kar-Wai, Doris Wishman, Jess Franco and Dario Argento. He is currently serving as the executive director of Wicked Queer:Boston’s LGBTQ+ Film Festival, an organization that he has been part of for the last decade.

Both MFA graduates of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Ken Linehan and Brittany Gravely work as artists of many media both separately and together as “Magical Approach” with a focus on 16mm film, sound and psychic experimentation. Both members of Boston’s AgX Film Collective, their films have recently screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, Artifact, Fracto, Crossroads, Chicago Underground and Antimatter, among others. For years, Ken taught courses on sound art and film sound at MassArt and RISD. Brittany works as the publicist and designer for the Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge, MA.

With a focus on sound and audio media, Ken Linehan‘s creative work explores intermedia space through works including field recording, 16mm films, silkscreen, and a variety of music projects. Having graduated in 2001 with an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Kenneth has taught courses on sound art and film sound at MassArt and RISD. Most recently, Ken has been engaged in a series of psychic/cinematic collaborations in Magical Approach with Brittany Gravely.  Over the past decade his work has been exhibited at arts spaces, live music and cinematic venues such as the RISD Museum, the Boston Center for the Arts, Apex Art, AS220 and the Brattle Theatre, including events programed by Mono No Aware, Magic Lantern Cinema,  Millennium Film Workshop & Balagan Films.

Artistically Brittany Gravely has focused on 16mm film for the past several years, but also creates works in many other media. Currently, she creates expanded and non-expanded cinema projects of a more mystical nature in Magical Approach with Ken Linehan. Recently, their films screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, Artifact, Fracto, Crossroads, Chicago Underground and Antimatter, among others. She also works as the publicist and designer for the Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge, MA.

BAYLEY SWEITZER is a filmmaker living and working in Brooklyn, whose practice revolves around an ongoing attempt to repurpose narrative film form in order to convey radical political possibilities. His work has been shown at Film at Lincoln Center, Walker Art Center, Tate Modern, Berlinale, Anthology Film Archives, Bozar in Brussels, Pacific Film Archive, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Other Cinema in San Francisco, and Artists Space in New York City. Sweitzer has received a 2021 Creative Capital Awards and recent moving image commissions from the Park Avenue Armory in New York City, Gasworks in London, and Spike Island in Bristol. Sweitzer also works professionally as a focus puller and is a member of the International Cinematographers Guild, IATSE Local 600.

ZINNIA NAQV (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her work examines issues of colonialism, cultural translation, language, and gender through the use of photography, video, the written word, and archival material. Recent projects have included archival and re-staged images, experimental documentary films, video installations, graphic design, and elaborate still-lives. Her artworks often invite the viewer to consider the position of the artist and the spectator, as well as analyze the complex social dynamics that unfold in front of the camera.

Naqvi’s work has been exhibited and screened across Canada and internationally. She is a 2022 Fall Flaherty/Colgate Distinguished Global Filmmaker in Residence and recipient of the 2019 New Generation Photography Award organized by the National Gallery of Canada. Naqvi is member of EMILIA-AMALIA Working Group, an intergenerational feminist collective. Naqvi received a BFA in Photography Studies from Toronto Metropolitan University and an MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University. She is currently a sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto and Toronto Metropolitan University.