The Experimental Film Podcast

Ken Hess
  • 5.0 (7)
  • VISUAL ARTS
  • UPDATED BIMONTHLY

Dedicated exclusively to experimental film and its makers

  1. 09/05/2025

    Season 5 Episode 11 - Lynne Sachs and Lizzie Olesker - Handbook: A Manual on Performance, Process, and the Labor of Laundry

    Handbook: A Manual on Performance, Process, and the Labor of Laundry presents an illuminating dialogue between the documentary arts, feminism, film, immigration, labor history, and theater. Throughout, a playwright and filmmaker contemplate how art-making can alter our understanding of the social structures of city life. Lynne Sachs is a filmmaker and poet. Her early works on Celluloid took a feminist approach to images and writing—a commitment which has grounded her ever since. With each project, Sachs investigates the connections between the body, the camera, and the materiality of film itself. Embracing archives, found images, letters, and journals, her work pursues a critical journey through reality and memory. In films such as The House of Science, Which Way Is East, Your Day Is My Night, and Film About a Father Who, Sachs uses a hybrid form and collaboration, incorporating documentary, performance, and collage. Lizzie Olesker has been creating theater and performance in New York City for several decades, exploring the politics and poetry of everyday experience. Her plays and solo performances exploring domestic work, personal memory, and quotidian gestures have been developed and presented in NYC at The Public, Cherry Lane Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, Dixon Place, New Georges, and the Ohio Theater. As an actor, she’s worked with The Talking Band, appearing at La Mama and on an international tour.

    1h 5m

  2. 08/17/2025

    Season 5 Episode 10 - Jeremy Drummond - Artist, Filmmaker, Field Recorder, and Audio and Video Programmer

    Jeremy Drummond's work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and festivals worldwide. His films/videos have received awards such as the National Film Board of Canada Award at the Images Festival (Toronto), Best Experimental Video at the Reeling: Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival, the People's Choice Award at the New Forms Festival (Vancouver), and the No Budget Award at the Cinematexas Festival of International Film & Video (Austin). He has received grants and fellowships from the Canada Council for the Arts, National Film Board of Canada, and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. His work has been featured and/or reviewed in magazines, journals, and newspapers, including Art Papers, Cabinet, Canadian Architect, Frieze, NRC Handelsblad, Prefix Photo, SEAMUS, The Washington Post, and The Wire: Adventures in Sound & Music.Drummond's films and videos are distributed internationally by LIMA (Amsterdam), Videographe (Montreal), Video Pool Inc. (Winnipeg), Vtape (Toronto), and The Film-maker's Cooperative/The New American Cinema Group (NYC). His printed works are/have been available from Art Metropole (Toronto), Printed Matter Inc. (NYC), and the New Museum of Contemporary Art (NYC). In addition to his solo work, Drummond works extensively with artist David Poolman as Never Met A Stranger -- a collaborative platform for the production of art and experimental media, a publisher of vernacular arts and culture, and an ongoing archive of field recordings, interviews, and documentary resources that collectively explore relationships between perception and representation, industry and the environment, and landscape and culture throughout central Appalachia and the rural North American South.Drummond is the organizer and curator of the Frames of Reference annual program of artists' film and video. With support from the University of Richmond's Department of Art & Art History, University Museums, and School of Arts & Sciences, Frames of Reference showcases some of the most creative, challenging, thoughtful, and visionary artists working in film, video, and alternative media today. Programs feature artists and artworks that resist conventions and ideologies of mainstream media; explore creative, innovative approaches to narrative and experiments in time-based media; and embrace unique viewpoints, perspectives, or frames of reference.

    1h 3m

  3. 07/06/2025

    Season 5 Episode 9 - Ian Joseph Greene - Stop-Motion Animator, Filmmaker, and Video Artist

    Ian Joseph Greene is a California-based stop-motion animator, filmmaker, and video artist. His award-winning work has screened at festivals such as Shockfest, Butte Film Festival, Warped Dimensions (Best Splatter/Slasher), Coop Microcinema, Nooga Underground, and Tromadance, and is streaming on TromaNow. Greene’s work is known for its grotesque humor, surreal visuals, and experimental technique. Ian and I had a great time speaking about his work, his techniques, and his struggles with anxiety. Please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and be sure to share the podcast to help fellow artists get the recognition they deserve.

    58 min

  4. 06/16/2025

    Season 5 Episode 8 - Tess Martin - Artist and Filmmaker

    Tess Martin is an artist who often works with hand-made animation techniques such as cut-outs, ink, paint, sand, objects or phonotropes. Tess’ work has been exhibited at international galleries and festivals such as TOKAS Hongo (JP), International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL), Ann Arbor Film Festival (USA), and more. She was selected as an artist-in-residence at, among others, the Hawthornden Writer's Retreat (Scotland, 2022), the Camargo Foundation (France, 2019), and the Bogliasco Foundation (Italy, 2017). Recent funders include the Dutch Film Fund, the Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, the City of Rotterdam, the Center for Visual Art Rotterdam, and Rooftop Films.

    1h 55m

  5. 05/30/2025

    Season 5 Episode 7 - MM Serra - Experimental Filmmaker, Photographer, Curator, and Gardener

    If you've followed the MM Serra series, this is part 3. Curator, author, professor at Parsons at the New School and the Executive Director of Film-Makers' Cooperative, the world's oldest and largest archive of independent media. Her first five films (NYC, 1985, Nightfall, 1984, Framed, 1984, PPI, 1986, Turner, 1987) were preserved and digitized by Anthology Film Archives Preservation series Re-Visions: American Experimental Film 1975-1990. Since 1982, MM Serra has created more than 31 films.

    58 min

  6. 05/22/2025

    Season 5 Episode 6 - MM Serra - Experimental Filmmaker, Photographer, Curator, and Gardener

    MM Serra is an experimental filmmaker, curator, author, professor at Parsons at the New School and the Executive Director of Film-Makers' Cooperative, the world's oldest and largest archive of independent media. Her first five films (NYC, 1985, Nightfall, 1984, Framed, 1984, PPI, 1986, Turner, 1987) were preserved and digitized by Anthology Film Archives Preservation series Re-Visions: American Experimental Film 1975-1990. Since 1982, MM Serra has created over 31 films.  This is our second episode in this deep dive with MM Serra.

    1h 18m

  7. 05/03/2025

    Season 5 Episode 5 - MM Serra - Experimental Filmmaker, Photographer, Curator, and Gardener

    MM Serra is an experimental filmmaker, curator, author, professor at Parsons at the New School and the Executive Director of Film-Makers' Cooperative, the world's oldest and largest archive of independent media. Her first five films (NYC, 1985, Nightfall, 1984, Framed, 1984, PPI, 1986, Turner, 1987) were preserved and digitized by Anthology Film Archives Preservation series Re-Visions: American Experimental Film 1975-1990. Since 1982, MM Serra has created over 31 films.

    57 min

  8. 04/06/2025

    Season 5 Episode 4 - Erica Schreiner - Experimental Video and Performance Artist

    Erica Schreiner is an experimental video and performance artist based in New York City. She shoots on VHS while performing before the camera. Erica creates allegorical, ethereal video art that combines feminine and anarchistic themes, ritual, and sensuality. Manipulating existing objects or building sets to perform in and film, Erica creates surreal, intimate worlds on VHS video, employing her clearly defined style. Erica received a Bachelor degree in Graphic Design from The Art Institute of Portland. Once in New York, she attended the School of Visual Arts Lens and Screen Art’s Residency Program with a full scholarship, and went on to study performance art under the direction of Marina Abramović at MoMA PS1. Erica Schreiner has completed more than 100 performative video art pieces, including two feature films and several music videos. In 2021, Erica received a New York City Artist Corps Grant for her second feature film, The Special People. Erica’s work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and film festivals, including The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, The Bill Hodges Gallery in NYC, Nick Knight's SHOWstudio, Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, The Portland Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and Performance Space New York. Erica is a member of the New York Film-makers' Cooperative (est. 1961) and is on the curatorial committee at Millennium Film Workshop (est. 1967). The Skye Project documentary: https://donate.uniondocs.org/campaigns/skye-4ever/The MoMA curation I've been working on with MM Serra: https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5807

    1h 14m
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Ratings & Reviews

5
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7 Ratings

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Dedicated exclusively to experimental film and its makers

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