2016 Black Maria Film Festival Program

own and, as a very low resolution (or rustic look), worked just
right for media artists like Sadie Benning and Joe Gibbons...”
“I recently bought a high resolution video camera and traded
in my 16mm Arriflex Camera. There’s a looseness when
capturing images on video and there’s a huge amount more
time available on a digital memory card than on a 400 foot roll
of 16mm film. And the cost of recording images is geometrically
less expensive by many factors. Now if I could only figure out
the software for digital editing, but that’s a whole different
discussion (i.e. physically editing strips of celluloid film
hanging on one’s neck or in an actual editing bin and cutting
on a flatbed machine verses digital editing with virtual editing
bins and drag and pasting with a virtual mouse. But I kept
my vintage Bell&Howell spring wound 16mm camera and my
Rivas editing block.”
What about trying to start a traveling indie festival now?
When John initiated Black Maria, the notion of an indie festival
event was hardly a novel idea. Since at least the 1960s, there
had been regional start-up independent festivals—a notable
one in Utah, for example, founded in 1978, now thriving within
the commercial world.
Many festivals were originally conceived, in part, as magnets
to attract tourists to an area: with the allure of art, so the
argument goes, people will spend money, and business will
boom. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this notion,
the most admired festivals are those whose more thoughtful,
more conceptual roots have remained intact. They are harder
to track down for a mainstream press and audience, but Black
Maria is one of them.
Knowing already John’s accounts of the Black Maria’s history
and origins, I was hoping to move beyond that and find out
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