MIX NYC is a not-for-profit organization based in New York City dedicated to queer experimental film. MIX has supported filmmaking workshops, queer history programs such as the ACT UP Oral History Project (on video) and film restorations of work by important queer filmmakers such as Jack Smith. It is also known as the "MIX festival" for its most visible program, the annual week-long New York Queer Experimental Film Festival (NYQEFF), a highly-influential cultural event since 1987, which has supported curators such as Shari Frilot and featured early works by filmmakers such as Christine Vachon, Todd Haynes, Isaac Julien, Thomas Allen Harris, Barbara Hammer, Juan Carlos Zaldivar, Jonathan Caouette, Jennie Livingston, Gus Van Sant, and Matthew Mishory. The festival has held a critical role in both promoting experimental work by queer filmmakers, and in the evolution of radical queer culture via the "organisational mediation of collective identity".
History
1980s-1990s
1987 - 1992 MIX was founded in 1987 by Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard, who felt the newly emerging Gay Film Festivals were not including formally inventive work, while the vibrant experimental film venues of the time marginalized gay and lesbian work. They were aided by curators Jack Waters and Peter Cramer from Naked Eye Cinema, and Ela Troyano who programmed The New York Film Festival Downtown. The first festival, titled A Queer Sort of Film, screened at Millennium film Workshop in the East Village, and featured the world premiere of Su Friedrich's Damned If You Don't, and Juan Carlos Zaldivar's Palingenesis.
From then on the festival became a showcase for emerging artists, new works by established makers, and archival masters such as Barbara Rubin's Christmas on Earth. Sensational moments from the festival's early history included a screening of Andy Warhol's Blow Job which was attended by Kitty Carlisle Hart in a gown with a tuxedo'd escort.
The New York Lesbian & Gay Experimental Film Festival (NYLGEFF), in concert with the emerging AIDS activist and Queer activist movement of the day, became a mass cultural event in the LGBTQ underground. The festival screened work by filmmakers such as Barbara Hammer, Michelle Handelman, Nisha Ganatra, Teri Rice, Juan Carlos Zaldivar and Isaac Julien and hundreds more, and found ways of screening works by makers like Chantal Akerman, who otherwise considered it "reductive" to screen in gay and lesbian film festivals.
A counter-culture of new interest in filmmaking and video production emerged around the festival community, which soon became influential on other programming venues, often contributing significant work to The Whitney Biennial, Berlin International Film Festival and other important screens. MIX exhibited the first films of major lesbian, gay and bisexual filmmakers including Christine Vachon's first film, Todd Haynes' college thesis film Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud (which got him his first review, ever), Maria Maggenti's Name Day, and the first screening of Jennie Livingston's Paris Is Burning, when it was still on a dual system.
MIX programmed work marginalized from other festivals, including transgender work from the very first year, with Marguerite Paris's film All Women Are Equal (29mins, 1978), which would be restored by the festival in later years. MIX curated the first programme of films by and about black gay men, in any film festival, and screened gay experimental film from other countries. Hubbard and Schulman also toured films to international venues around the US, Brazil, Europe and Japan.
Schulman and Hubbard labored to gain press review coverage for gay experimental work, often holding individual press screenings at the critics' convenience. They hand wheat-pasted posters on buildings around the city, and leafleted areas where gay people hung out, like the piers and bars.
Hubbard and Schulman prioritized artists' fees, paying all makers equally regardless of the length of their work, since in experimental film, labor intensity was not always determined by length. MIX received no funding, running as a community event from 1987-1991, yet managed to break even on enthusiastic box office support. Friday nights were guaranteed sold-out "Lesbian Date Nights". However, Schulman and Hubbard ensured no one was ever turned away from MIX, if unable to pay for a ticket.
As filmmakers began to die of HIV/AIDS, in this era, Hubbard became active in film preservation, beginning with the film Avocada by the late Bill Vehr of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Hubbard preserved over 2,000 hours of AIDS Film and Video, now available for free viewing at the New York Public Library.
The 1992 festival was organized by Hubbard and filmmakers Marguerite Paris and Jerry Tartaglia, as Schulman left to devote more time to her writing. That year introduced programs by guest curators, who brought new perspectives to the line-up. Notable shows included Our Fanzine Friends, which drew upon the hot trend of queer zines, featuring work by Glenn Belverio and Bruce LaBruce. Fire, a program of work from the African diaspora, featured work by Dawn Suggs, Shari Frilot, Thomas Allen Harris and others.
1993 - 1996 In 1993, the festival became known as MIX: The New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival, and Shari Frilot and Karim Aïnouz became co-directors, introducing many changes, including a new venue at The Kitchen (instead of Anthology Film Archives), production of a formal catalog, and a commitment to multicultural queer film and installation art. A standout program was The 1000 Dreams of Desire, curated by Jim Lyons. The show was staged at the Ann Street Bookstore in Lower Manhattan, where the peep booths were reprogrammed with experimental video, and 16 mm film was projected in a separate room, such as Teri Rice's The Kindling Point and Les Affaires. Ainouz and Frilot helped initiate satellite festivals MIX Brasil (1993) and MIX Mexico (1996).
From 1994, Frilot became the definitive voice of MIX, as Ainouz began to scale back his involvement. Frilot made the organization a home for emerging filmmakers and makers of color. This was signaled by 1994's opening film Brincando El Charco, and more powerfully still when 1995's opening and closing events were from makers of color. These films, Thomas Allen Harris's Vintage: Families of Value, and Frilot's own documentary Black Nations/Queer Nations, brought important new audiences to MIX. MIX returned to Anthology, and merged with Downtown Community Television Center (DCTV)'s Lookout Lesbian & Gay Video Festival, as DCTV's building was under renovation.
The 1995 festival saw ongoing debate as to the festival's name, Ainouz commenting it needed to be rethought, "almost epistemologically". given the range of perspectives the festival included at this time, that stemmed from more mutable visions of queer subjectivity and collectivity than a "gay and lesbian" label suggested, and which was an element of the festival's significance, in contrast to the largely representational politics of other LGBT festivals at the time.
Frilot's other legacy in this era was a commitment to installation work and the nascent digital realm. Installations had previously been on view in 1993 on the upper floor of The Kitchen, but from 1994, MIX NYC staff began devoting substantial space and resources to installations. Shu Lea Cheang and Beth Stryker curated the first formal installation program Cyberqueer, in the basement galleries of Anthology. Frilot went on to become a senior programmer at the Sundance Film Festival and curator of the New Frontier program.
1996: 10th Anniversary of MIX 1996, in honor of the festival's 10th anniversary, presented queer work from the African diaspora at the Victoria Theater in Harlem (the first queer cultural festival held there), including work by Marlon Riggs, Cheryl Dunye and Isaac Julien, alongside Ballroom events hosted by House of Latex, in addition to programs at NYU's Cantor Film Center and the Knitting Factory downtown.
1997-2000 From 1997, Rajendra Roy was in charge, and the festival moved to Cinema Village, when it was a single-screen theater on E. 12th Street. Roy brought on Anie Stanley as artistic director in 1998, and as a team they propelled MIX to greater visibility, with greater support from corporate sponsors and less emphasis on the identity politics of the early 1990s. Roy went on to be the Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Film at the Museum of Modern Art.
Ernesto Foronda and Maïa Cybelle Carpenter were programming coordinators in 1997, with Carpenter staying on in this role until 1999, and curating individual programs in years to follow. 1998 also saw a sidebar of 8mm film curated by Stephen Kent Jusick, featuring work by Jack Smith, Juan Carlos Zaldivar' The Story of the Red Rose and Andy Warhol's Polavision home movies.
Early 2000s
2001 - 2002 Ioannis Mookas assumed the title of Executive Director in 2001, as Roy & Stanley stepped down. The festival suffered after 9/11, as the organization's offices had been in the financial district. Mookas departed after overseeing the 2001 and 2002 festivals.
2003 - 2005 From 2003, Larry Shea and Stephen Winter took the film festival's helm. MIX also took a new direction as an organization in 2003, when Hubbard and Schulman initiated the ACT UP Oral History Project, funded by the Ford Foundation, widening the scope of MIX as an organisation beyond the festival itself.
A large-scale installation about garment workers, Cake, by Mary Ellen Strom & Ann Carlson, debuted at South Street Seaport as a 2003 festival centerpiece. Shea and Winter also reimagined 1993's 1000 Dreams of Desire program, re-staging it after 10 years, with differences, yet at its original Ann Street location. In addition to the video booths, and screening room on the upper floor, the basement was also cleared out, setting up MIX's first immersive space to feature a dance floor and DJs, and ambient 16mm & 8mm film projections.
Jonathan Caouette's collagist, multimedial indie doc Tarnation, about his life with a mother who survives sexual assault and mental illness, was shepherded into being under Stephen Winter's supervision as Producer, after being handed an early cut by John Cameron Mitchell, becoming a standout indie feature of 2005. MIX's 2003 premiere of Caouette's “weirdly beautiful, cubist act of self-exploration” was the beginning of an illustrious path, with support from Executive Producers Mitchell and Gus Van Sant, to Cannes and a slew of screenings and awards at international film festivals, and distribution deal with Wellspring.
MIX failed to capitalize financially on the success of Tarnation, with money troubles leading Shea to skip 2004's festival and move the next iteration to April 2005. Meanwhile, however, MIX expanded its work as an organisation, with the 2004 introduction of MIXtv, airing weekly on Manhattan Neighborhood Network.
2004's opening night "happening" was held in Manhattan's NoMad district in the Beaux-Arts Gershwin Hotel, with regular screenings back at Anthology Film Archives. The festival featured t-shirts for the first time since 1996, created by artist Jim Morrison.
MIX 2005 began a community screening program, taking screenings to various neighborhoods and communities around New York, beginning in February with The Bronx. 2005 would also be Larry Shea's last MIX festival as a director, as he departed to devote time to his video art practice.
2006 - 2015: Warehouse Era