They've had this annual fee-freed, juried exhibition every year for several years and I think they decided to add a media arts component in addition to their visual arts component so that film and video makers could participate as well. Every year they pick a theme, this year's theme is "Mayhem" and applicants have to make a piece that fits that theme.

I think anything that fits into the yearly theme, as long as you can convince the juror that your piece has to do with the theme, and a juror likes it, that's all we require...and that it be under 15 minutes. For the visual art component or the film component, you can only turn in one piece per year.

I think this year I must have looked at 65 or 70 pieces. Luckily most of them were a lot less than 15 minutes. And I think we took 8 or 9.

Two people at Southern Exposure were helping me out. They collected the tapes, they took care of all of the logistics, and they made a list of all the applicants. I looked at the films and made my lists for it as well. I also think we have a few people helping on the night of the screening, to take care of whatever goals we might need to care for that night.

I think to get as broad a range (as possible) of people who are making work in the Bay Area...and to get as many endless variations on the theme as we can. To have some limitations, but still be as open as possible.

The Red Vic has been around for years and years and years and it started as some kind of hippie compound. In the spirit of artist run collectives, I think Southern Exposure, an artist run organization itself, picked the Red Vic. Southern Exposure is a non-profit that serves the artist community and so I think that there was sort of a parallel in philosophies with the Red Vic. Plus it's centrally located, they have a regular clientele, and that really great popcorn with the yeast on it.

You know, I'm not sure why they decided to go out of the mission. Sometimes it's just about the availability of screening venues. Certainly the Roxie is much closer but they probably book way in advance and they have a certain thing they want to do. In some cases it just comes down to availability.

I think so. There's a lot of film and video artist out there who always want to show their stuff. So you can always find people interested in showing their work.

I think, work that surprises you, as far as the theme is concerned, but, at the same time, still has cohesion with the whole screening. There were a few films that I absolutely loved but didn't make sense for the topic. They were completely off topic and I wasn't sure why they sent them in but I really liked them and just couldn't squeeze them into the framework of Mayhem. Having some kind of vision or flow is a good thing but the screening can't be repetitious. So I have to find a balance between work that has some kind of variety and yet has cohesion as a unit.

That's a funny way to put it. I don't know if these people are professionals or amateurs. I know there are a lot of students; most people can't make a living making the kinds of films that get screened at this show. But I think that a lot of these people have track records. I think they've been shown in the past and there are some people who haven't but it's all-okay.

Like I said, the Bay Area is really great because there are so many people working here in media: either new Media or digital technology, multimedia or straight up analogue film/celluloid. There are still a lot of people working in celluloid, 16mm and 8mm film. There's a lot of community in the area because there are people here who make film. You can always get a lot of people to submit. And likewise, you can always get a lot of people to come to the shows because people are prime to this kind of stuff. They're not just raised on Hollywood movies in the Bay Area. There are so many venues: The Roxie, The Red Vic, The Castro, The Balboa all these movie theatres that all these great pictures like indie features. Plus all these places like the San Francisco Cinemateque, Other Cinema, Artist Television Access, Film Arts. And then, how many film festivals are there in this town? It seems every time you turn around there's another film festival. So we've got these audiences who are very educated and want to come and watch movies that are not your basic Hollywood movie. So we have much more open-minded clientele. And that's probably the biggest thing about San Francisco and the resources you can draw in: you can get people who want to watch this stuff and you don't have to show it in someone's garage. You can get real movie theatres, like the Red Vic, to show it and you can even fill up a house.

The Press is really good here, too. The Bay Guardian is really great, as far as reviewing independent film. There are all kinds of various websites and blogs. There's a great network of people who watch independent or experimental movies or off beat stuff and those are really great resources.

Usually that's how these curatorial screenings function, where they are preliminary access and then other people see them in other screenings, theatres pick them up, that sort of thing.
Any time you have a screening and you have a record of that screening, even if it's just a little brochure that record gets sent around. Or record of the screening will be up on the website and people will access it and go to find the rest of the films in a particular screening and then seek out one video from the group. So it's not necessarily a one-night thing anymore. I know that Southern Exposure makes a master copy of the screening. I don't know if they have plans for distributing it but you can certainly contact the filmmakers easily. Again, because of he web, everybody can research anybody's name or work. So self-distribution is a lot more efficient these days because of the Internet so I hope that others will see these films and seek them out online.  A couple of these films I had seen at other film festivals so I didn't have to see them again, I knew I already liked them. I had them on a DVD from the Film Arts Festival and I had watched that. So they're making the rounds. These films make the rounds, even more than they could have 10 years ago, when people were not so able to connect as they are now.

There's a lot of sharing in the Bay Area. There are a lot of people interested in independent or experimental film or whatever you want to call it. I was just thinking about how different that is from Los Angeles, where everyone is so competitive, you don't share anything with each other. Part of that is because in San Francisco you can't become rich and famous by being a filmmaker so maybe your less compelled as far as keeping things close to the vest. I think that helps a lot and people are fairly open about talking to each other.

 I know that Southern Exposure has a really traditional mailing list with paper and postage and so forth but I suspect they reach more people through their email list. That's the usual way I get word out to everybody too. I sent out an email to everyone on my spam list that I curated a show and it saves on postage and time and it's fast and easy and people look at it. I don't know why. I think you just have to hit all the aspects: somebody told me it was called the three-drip theory of marketing. You have to hit people three times. So if they hear it on the radio and then see a flier and then read it on the Internet, then it finally starts to sink into their brain. I had a person who had this three-drip theory and first she'd plaster fliers up all around the theatre; then she'd try to get on the radio, which she did pretty successfully; and then she'd pester the newspapers and send out press releases and then is when it hits people. Because if you hear it one time you don't necessarily pay attention but if you hear it more than once something in your subconscious brain picks it up. In some ways it's more complex these days and in other ways it's simpler to do this sort of self-promotion.

I think anytime you have some kind of literature up on the web or you need to google someone and see what else they've done, it's always nice to have more background. You used to have all these reams of paper people would send with their submissions and it was like "aw man" because who wants to read that? Now you can go to people's websites and see what they've done and it's a lot tidier.

Mistakes? I usually start to watch the movies late at night because that's when I have spare time. And you know, sometimes, when you are tired and you start to watch things that are... abstract, you start to fall asleep. So don't watch abstract films too late at night. Have a cup of coffee or do it in the morning, otherwise you might not make it.

It's always fun that night. It's a lot of work to get everything together and to get people there but there is still no substitute for having a huge group of people together to watch something. I'm a big fan of watching things in a theatre. Even though I have the DVD, it's so much more fun. You get your big thing of popcorn and you sit with all these people and it's some kind of collective experience.

Yeah! Human beings like that, they need that. Must be sort of like why people go to church. I don't go to church but I go to movies.

I tried to get as much of a range as I could, within theme of course. One of them is an animation by Sarah Cohen, and it's based on the theme of Mayhem - really simple - of a woman going through her everyday chores. But then she does some really strange things like put a hand grenade in a microwave. It's very matter of fact and it's hand drawn and hand animated and low tech. Kind of cool. And then the other end of the spectrum in terms of technology, there a film called Aluminum by Tyrone Davies and that's only 3 minutes long but it's got thousands of images. He took sound and footage from what looks like TV or news of apparently what looks like footage from Iraq and he edited it together really, really fast. He has this really great soundtrack and at one point you see a can of coca-cola being shot out of a rocket launcher and I'm not sure if he composited that or if it's something he found on TV but it happens in like a third of a second and it goes by almost too fast to comprehend. It's sort of like those impressionist paintings that are made of dots and you have to back away to see the picture, because if you don't back away you can't see what's going on.

I think Southern Exposure will do it every year. I don't know if I'll get to curate it next year because I did it this year, but I've been involved with Southern Exposure for years and years. I used to be on their visual arts committee and I actually showed there a couple of times. They're really good about bringing back people who are in their "fold" as it were. They're artist based so they always want people to come in and participate.

It's good for me because I get to see what other people are doing...see the visual trends. Some of these filmmakers are a lot younger than me so they're up on top of what the new special effects are. It's always good to watch what they're doing. Not necessarily imitate them but be inspired by them.

There are a lot of cool people in San Francisco.

No, I think that the people who live here want to have fun and they want life to be neat. Quality of life is so important.