Robert A. Haller was a founding member of Pittsburgh Filmmakers and is director of collections and special projects at Anthology Film Archives in New York.

The San Francisco Bay Area and New York were historically centers of avant-garde filmmaking and exhibition, but by the 1970s interest was spreading to other areas of the country. In his recent book, Crossroads: Avant-Garde Film in Pittsburgh in the 1970s, Robert Haller looks at how Pittsburgh became the “third city” for experimental cinema. Stan Brakhage's visits to the city in the early seventies led to the remarkable, rarely screened trilogy we present tonight. Pittsburgh Press photographer Mike Chikiris arranged for Brakhage to film while riding on patrol with local policemen, resulting in the film eyes (35 mins). This was followed by two other “documents,” as Brakhage called them, also related to Pittsburgh social institutions. Deus Ex (33 mins) details open-heart surgery at a local hospital, and The Act of Seeing with one's own eyes (32 mins) focuses on autopsy dissections. Haller comments, “What one initially expects to be unwatchable becomes a reverential celebration of the human body.” In early 2006, we will highlight further films from Anthology Film Archives' Crossroads series, focusing on works by Pittsburgh artists.

Crossroads: Avant-Garde Film in Pittsburgh in the 1970s will be available for purchase at the screening and in the Museum Store ($7, paperback).