Artist in Person

Beat filmmaker Dion Vigné's legacy has largely been forgotten. He made a few films in the fifties and sixties before dying of a drug overdose in 1970. In 1997, filmmakers David Sherman and Rebecca Barten were scouting a site for their upcoming wedding and met Dion's former wife, Loreon Vigné. Some time later, she gave them four boxes of Vigné's film material and audiotapes-an archeological treasure trove had found its perfect caretakers. In time for their five–year anniversary, Sherman has completed To Re-edit the World, a brilliant reconstituting of a lost history. Fascinated by the content of "footage that found him," Sherman assembles recordings of Vigné talking with contemporaries Jordan Belson and the Whitney brothers, graphics from the edge of film frames, audio recordings of Bobby Beausoleil's Orkustra at the Fillmore, and home movies of an outdoor party with Kenneth Anger in attendance. Even the covers of boxes of reel-to-reel recordings serve as poignant reminders of the fragility of history-as the capability to transfer material from older technologies is ever more in jeopardy, so is the capacity to "re–history" such vibrant local chronicles.