Project MUSE®: Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 47 (2006) through current issue
Latest Articles: Framework: The Journal of Cinema and MediaTWOProject MUSE®Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media1559-79890306-7661Latest articles in Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Editorial
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948292
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This is a very special double issue devoted to the work of MM Serra: Film-Makers' Co-operative Executive Director Emeritus, teacher, mentor, and artist. That list of titles and roles hardly indicates the extraordinary breadth of MM's work, art and interests, her long friendships, rich artist networks, and commitment to diversity, to outsiders, to the flourishing edges. Framework's celebratory double issue includes testimonials, art pieces, memoirs, biographies, and conversations from friends and colleagues, stitching together a multi-perspectival, layered collage of MM's life
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallEditorial2025-01-03text/htmlen-USEditorial2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®18512026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03"I Want to Ferret Out Diversity from the Collection, Its Underground, Its Outcasts, Its Explorers": A Festschrift for MM Serra
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948293
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This Framework double issue, FW65 1&2, is a Festschrift reflecting on the career of award-winning experimental filmmaker, curator, writer, and teacher MM Serra who served for 30 years as Executive Director of the Film-Makers' Cooperative (FMC) in New York City. Founded in 1961, the trailblazing FMC is "the first artist-run organization devoted to the dissemination of moving image art." As part of its mission, the FMC asserts that "artists and estates maintain creative control of their works, as we are a non-contractual, non-exclusive, membership-based, non-profit group." Claiming to be "the largest archive and distributor of independent and avant-garde films in the world," the FMC is open to scholars and artists
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmall"I Want to Ferret Out Diversity from the Collection, Its Underground, Its Outcasts, Its Explorers": A Festschrift for MM Serra2025-01-03text/htmlen-US"I Want to Ferret Out Diversity from the Collection, Its Underground, Its Outcasts, Its Explorers": A Festschrift for MM Serra2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®53502026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03"From My Mouth to Your Ear": Recounting a Life in Art and Cinema
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948294
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MM Serra is a powerhouse New York City cinema visionary and a beloved friend since the late 1980s. As Executive Director of the Film-Makers' Cooperative, Serra (as I have always called her) asked me to join the Cooperative's board of directors in 1997, soon after I moved to town with my partner filmmaker, Mark Street, and our daughters, Maya and Noa Street-Sachs. Over the course of the next 17 years, we worked together on innumerable projects including: a 2006 anti-war exhibition (fig. 1
) and DVD entitled For Life Against the War … Again (US, 2007), currently distributed by the FMC (fig. 2 and 3 For Life Against the War … Again photos); a PS1/MoMA children's film series entitled "Cinema of the Unusual," curated by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmall"From My Mouth to Your Ear": Recounting a Life in Art and Cinema2025-01-03text/htmlen-US"From My Mouth to Your Ear": Recounting a Life in Art and Cinema2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®552502026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03"Your lens is a tongue, lick all the surfaces": A Taste of the Life of MM Serra
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948295
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This response to the vagaries of human existence, the weakness of the flesh, especially female flesh, gave me pause for thought. It indicated on the one hand, that the Virgin Mary knew much better than God the ins and outs so to speak of human nature, what we were up to, and that she had a tolerance and intelligence and humor that was perhaps missing from the male godhead.In 1991, MM Serra made Mary Magdaline3 with three of her longtime collaborators, Peggy Ahwesh, Abigail Child, and Tom Chomont. Lauded by Stan Brakhage as "one of the very few and one of the most important films on child abuse that has been made in the history of cinema,"4 Mary Magdaline shows Serra vulnerably, yet boldly, reclaiming autonomy
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmall"Your lens is a tongue, lick all the surfaces": A Taste of the Life of MM Serra2025-01-03text/htmlen-US"Your lens is a tongue, lick all the surfaces": A Taste of the Life of MM Serra2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®735722026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03Chance: Mary Magdalene Serra
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948296
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I moved to New York City, January 17, 1987, into a grimy apartment that had an extra room (but no bathroom) for the darkroom equipment that I shipped from Los Angeles. My Lower East Side neighborhood had affordable housing and offered an energetic, gritty glamor. New York City was like Paris in the '20s, a magnet drawing in creative energy. Artists do not work in isolation, as was apparent in Paris's and New York's artistic communities, where artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Jean Cocteau worked and experienced collectively; whereas in New York there was Maya Deren, Andy Warhol, and Jonas Mekas. These existing visionary forces continue to inspire my creative possibilities. Now I see the Lower East Side as a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallChance: Mary Magdalene Serra2025-01-03text/htmlen-USChance: Mary Magdalene Serra2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®187992026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03Roses Are Red (my love)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948297
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I love the enticing little black mask MM wears in the movies. It has become the trademark of her persona. Not that you could ever not know that she is the one behind it, but the mask allows for a certain naughtiness and anonymity to deflect identity—and also, it's a nod to porn conventions. We made Trick Film (Peggy Ahwesh, US, 1996) in 1996 or so, an old-fashioned stag film in which MM wore the mask and wielded a crop. In the movie, she is a dominatrix enjoying a leisurely afternoon at home but has to discipline her pet when the pup makes a mess. Bad puppy! Around that same time, we made Teacher's Pet (Peggy Ahwesh, US, 2006). In this one, MM plays a stern school Mistress and I am the undisciplined student who has
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallRoses Are Red (my love)2025-01-03text/htmlen-USRoses Are Red (my love)2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®86842026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03Meeting Up with MM Serra
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948298
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I had recently moved back to New York City in 2003 after living in Los Angeles for 15 years, and so I invited some friends over for dinner. Two of these friends were Chris Straayer and MM Serra, the latter of which I had only recently met. When the two showed up at my door, I noted that MM Serra was wearing a leopard coat. Luckily, I had a leopard chaise-lounge in my apartment. MM Serra proceeded to do what came naturally to her. She sat in the leopard chaise-lounge, with her leopard coat, and she struck a pose. We all laughed, of course, and then we took a picture. Sadly, the picture is now lost, but you can just imagine it—fun yet fierce. MM had come to dinner, and we all had a great time.It was a joyous evening
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallMeeting Up with MM Serra2025-01-03text/htmlen-USMeeting Up with MM Serra2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®51132026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03The Indispensable Expertise of MM Serra for Queer Experimental Film History
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948299
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I first met MM in 2005. George Chauncey, Michelle Puetz, and I were in the beginning stages of co-organizing the screening series and symposium "Beyond Warhol, Smith, and Anger: The Significance of Postwar Queer Underground Cinema, 1950–1968" at the University of Chicago in Spring, April 2006. At the time, we wanted to map the contours of a wider cultural formation, which we labeled postwar queer underground cinema, and to move beyond the more well-known experimental filmmakers Andy Warhol, Jack Smith, and Kenneth Anger. The series and symposium focused on the cinema that largely developed in the 1950s and '60s in the ferment of New York's East Village, the scene of complex interactions, collaborations, and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallThe Indispensable Expertise of MM Serra for Queer Experimental Film History2025-01-03text/htmlen-USThe Indispensable Expertise of MM Serra for Queer Experimental Film History2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®47882026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03You Said
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948300
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"You Said," paper, tape, text, 9.5" by 13.5," by Kiki Loveday.Say it. Say it OUTLOUD. New York City, Lincoln Center, Velvet Seats. That panel. That room, that moment, that scene. You said it. It's hard to describe the sound of taboo breaking. It's so unexpectedly soft and loud at the same time. It vibrates. The full force of y.o.u. Your voice. All the quiet shaking the room. It shook my soul when you said it. A revolution.Thank you for saying it.Xo, Kiki Loveday, June 16
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallYou Said2025-01-03text/htmlen-USYou Said2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®28122026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03What MM Teaches Me
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948301
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When you first meet MM Serra, as I'm sure one of these pieces will describe already, several points of discussion will emerge. Her latest project and perhaps her garden. She will ask you about your sign and tell you how she's a Virgo (for the record I'm an Aries). She will explain her name MM is short for Mary Magdalene, an identity that is central to her vision on life. Most notably she will welcome you in with open arms. It does not matter if you are just meeting her or have known her for years, MM will run to you with love.MM Serra is my family, my friend, my mentor, and when I first met her, my boss. I had taken an internship at The Film-Makers' Cooperative, in Spring 2018. I was 20 going on 21, studying
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallWhat MM Teaches Me2025-01-03text/htmlen-USWhat MM Teaches Me2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®45992026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03MM
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948302
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MM Serra was the first person in the avant-garde film community to take me seriously as a scholar and an artist. That's an odd phrase to write because "serious" is not the first term that comes to mind when I think of MM Serra. Spirited, creative, affectionate, effusive, riotous, stylish, one might even say kooky (in the best possible way), but "serious" seems far too drab a word to affix to such a vivacious filmmaker, organizer, and activist.Yet MM made me feel like the work I was doing was serious. While I was still a graduate student, she asked me to sign the famous wall of signatures at the Film-Makers' Coop, alongside so many of the visionary filmmakers and brilliant scholars whose work I worshipped. Then, in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallMM2025-01-03text/htmlen-USMM2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®57482026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03Experimental Women
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948303
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I first met MM Serra through Joe Wakeman. MM was looking for artists for the Museum of Sex, and my name came up. Joe shared some of my menstruation films with her, and she was really enthusiastic about them.As a queer woman in experimental filmmaking, I felt a kinship when I met MM Serra, an active filmmaker who makes deeply personal and autobiographical work. In a world that has been traditionally dominated by male voices, MM has fought to forge another way, elevating queer and women artists.When I was curating her retrospective at Millennium Film Workshop (founded in 1966), I had the honor of studying her catalog of films (of which there are over 35). I found one film that left me in a state of shock and awe.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallExperimental Women2025-01-03text/htmlen-USExperimental Women2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®47282026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03The Liveliness of the Avant-Garde
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948304
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I don't know when I met MM Serra for the first time, but I know I was nervous. It had little to do with her, I think, and lots to do with the Coop. I was living in Los Angeles, so it was likely the late '90s. I was researching queer and feminist underground films that in some way appropriated or otherwise referenced Hollywood. With a research trip planned for New York City, I made an appointment to view films. MM was warm and welcoming in our correspondence, as I recall. Something about the legendary history of the institution, however, gave me pause. Its macho aura overwhelmed me. But then I actually arrived at the bland building in the East 30s (if I recall correctly), met MM, and everything changed. Her chatty
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallThe Liveliness of the Avant-Garde2025-01-03text/htmlen-USThe Liveliness of the Avant-Garde2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®37172026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03The Brain of MM Serra
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948305
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I am awestruck by the brain of MM Serra. Serra's extraordinary intelligence is blatantly evident in her sublime films. And her triumphant career as Director of/for Film-Makers' Cooperative demonstratively amalgamated artistry, courage, responsibility, survival, cooperation, generosity, love, and pure brain power. But it is in Serra's spontaneous verbal displays, whether during curatorial talks or sidewalk conversations, that one witnesses her colossal range and speed of thought. Admittedly, it can be a challenge to fill in the ellipses as Serra darts among disparate conceptual arenas. Comprehending Serra requires a recognition of and respect for sagacity. Those who know Serra over time, and who step up their game
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallThe Brain of MM Serra2025-01-03text/htmlen-USThe Brain of MM Serra2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®34082026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03Fantastic Spirit
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948306
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How do you really honor someone, their work and their personhood? Love. Love is what this issue is about, and love was so evident in the Society of Cinema and Media Studies panel. I don't remember when I met MM exactly. I think it was around 2006. But I remember where. It was in The Clocktower, on Flower Street, in lower Manhattan, where the Film-Maker's Coop was situated before it moved to its current address on Park Avenue. I was on the New York Women in Film and Television's Women's Film Preservation Fund committee, and we had awarded a grant to restore a print of Storm de Hirsch's 1964 16mm film, Divinations (US). We had come to look at the print. MM's panache was a part of the room, part of the aura she
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallFantastic Spirit2025-01-03text/htmlen-USFantastic Spirit2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®32602026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03Color Me Coop
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948307
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MM was first a voice for me: the lilting tone at the other end of the line ("Film Coooop") whenever I phoned in about some rental or other. It was the early 1990s. I was in grad school at Indiana University, writing a dissertation on the 1960s underground, and I occasionally managed to squeeze modest institutional funds for film rentals. Those were the analog days of reels in mail valises. Shipments often tarried on the way, and I occasionally had to call in the Coop to ask their whereabouts. And the other way around—MM called the Film Studies Office to ask whether a prized print had been returned, as it was needed in Valencia, California, or at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, or at Bard College, or
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallColor Me Coop2025-01-03text/htmlen-USColor Me Coop2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®60252026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03MM Serra: A Witness to the World
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948308
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I became close with MM Serra while organizing a retrospective through Millennium Film Workshop of the works of Takahiko Iimura at Le Petit Versailles Garden in summer 2021. She has an exuberant, one-of-a-kind energy and a dedication to the moving image, its production, preservation, and exhibition unparalleled in most individuals I've ever known, and with her help guiding my curation, what initially might have been a small gathering grew to a monument to a life in art. Unknown to us at the time, we were mounting Taka's final show in the US—and we presented many original prints from across his long career in a beautiful vibrant outdoor space among flora and sculpture (which he said had always been a dream of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallMM Serra: A Witness to the World2025-01-03text/htmlen-USMM Serra: A Witness to the World2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®52222026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03A Conversation With MM Serra
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948309
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MM Serra viewing the exhibition at Mana Contemporary Jersey City, NJ 2020. Photo by Peter Cramer.Peter Cramer, MM Serra, and Jack Waters at Mana Contemporary Jersey City, NJ 2020. Photo by Jessica Gallucci.On May 12 and 13, 2024, MM Serra and I sat to talk about space, building community, and Queer community through the course of her life as an artist and during her years at the helm of the Film-Makers' Cooperative (FMC). The following is a short redacted excerpt from those conversations.… I remember our conversations about space. I thought it was very important that you and I both were filmmakers. We belong to communities. We belong to community gardens. And one thought I had when we were talking was that FMC had
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallA Conversation With MM Serra2025-01-03text/htmlen-USA Conversation With MM Serra2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®134522026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03"Cosmic turtles enjoying breakfast—wonderful rain yesterday": MM Serra as Neighbor
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948310
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I once asked MM Serra after a screening of her films why she so often left the camerawork to other people. Without missing a beat she told me: "It's called direction, darling." And so it is. MM has been director of many things in her career: of her films, of a film cooperative, of the unfolding film that is her own life. Cameras tend to follow her from place to place these days; we all have them in our pockets, and thus we are all available to MM's direction. One wonders what a modern Boswell could do with this fast-growing archive of wit and table talk. Whatever the result, it will have the special shape that only MM could give it. The force of her directing will be everywhere apparent. Direction, of course, can
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmall"Cosmic turtles enjoying breakfast—wonderful rain yesterday": MM Serra as Neighbor2025-01-03text/htmlen-US"Cosmic turtles enjoying breakfast—wonderful rain yesterday": MM Serra as Neighbor2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®86512026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03Mary Magdalene. The Myth, Legend, and Icon
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948311
<p></p>
Meeting Mary Magdalene this year has been the greatest gift. She's actually my downstairs neighbor. We met the first day I moved in. Within moments, she told us about what it's like living in the Lower East Side, her filmmaking, and her teaching at The New School. Immediately, she invited us into her world. It was only months later, when I got locked out of my apartment and looked for her friendly advice, that I realized the potential to create something with her. Even on the street, she says hi to everyone whether she knows them or not. In a city like New York, it's refreshing; the ability to make people feel welcome. Her desire to make people feel like a part of her community is what led me to want to make a film
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallMary Magdalene. The Myth, Legend, and Icon2025-01-03text/htmlen-USMary Magdalene. The Myth, Legend, and Icon2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®100452026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03MM Serra's Living Legacy, her Films, Gardens, & Turtles
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948312
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View from the top of the second of three buildings rented by the Coop under MM's tenure (2008). Reproduced by permission of Ger Zielinski.I finally met MM in person back when I started my postdoc project in the summer of 2008.2 I was researching transnational queer underground film culture of the 1970s, and the Film-Makers' Coop seemed a necessary hub to investigate. After giving me a thorough tour of the Coop offices and archives, MM surprised me with the offer to visit the rooftop. Why not, I responded with delight! We were met by such a classic Gotham view on top, only partially captured in my photo. (See Figure 1.)This text stems from my encounters with MM and recent conversations on her work and career that we
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/326/image/coversmallMM Serra's Living Legacy, her Films, Gardens, & Turtles2025-01-03text/htmlen-USMM Serra's Living Legacy, her Films, Gardens, & Turtles2025-01-032025TWOProject MUSE®149162026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-01-03