The 1960s saw the emergence of a wide range of approaches to cinema that offered alternatives to Hollywood commercial filmmaking, including new approaches to documentary and new forms of experimental and avant-garde filmmaking. One of the centers of what Jonas Mekas was calling the New American Cinema was the San Francisco Bay Area. By the early 1960s, Bruce Baillie and Chick Strand had begun informal screenings at an anarchist, mobile venue they called "Canyon Cinema." Soon, Canyon was publishing the Cinemanews, which by the end of the decade had become an international nexus for information about alternative media; and in 1966 Canyon became a distribution organization. For the past forty years, Canyon Cinema has shown itself to be the most dependable alternative film distribution organization in this country.

The filmmakers who were part of the emergence of Canyon Cinema and who made the organization a success also created a remarkable body of films that were widely influential and remain a considerable pleasure to experience and to think about. Bruce Baillie became well-known for his lovely film poetry; Bruce Conner's "recycling" of earlier films transformed commercial advertising and ultimately instigated MTV; Robert Nelson's Oh Dem Watermelons (1965) was, and remains, a powerful (and funny) attack on American racism; and Gunvor Nelson created a series of inventive and engaging feminist films.

Scott MacDonald will be present to introduce and contextualize two programs of Canyon films – one by Canyon men, the other by Canyon women – that will represent the range and the often revolutionary spirit that characterized the work of the Canyon filmmakers. MacDonald's new book, Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor, just published by the University of California Press, will be available at the screening.