2015 AVANT-GARDE MASTERS GRANTS AWARDED

Twice a Man by Gregory Markopoulos is Among Seven Films Slated for Preservation

San Francisco, CA (September 15, 2015)—Works by Owen Land, Ken Jacobs, Fred Camper, and Slavko Vorkapich will be saved alongside Gregory Markopoulos’ Twice a Man through the 2015 Avant-Garde Masters Grants awarded by The Film Foundation and the National Film Preservation Foundation. All told, seven films will be preserved and made available through the 2015 grants.

Twice a Man will be saved through a grant to Temenos, an archive dedicated to the work of Gregory Markopoulos, which will partner with the Austrian Film Museum to complete preservation of this landmark work. “One of the touchstones of independent filmmaking Gregory Markopoulos’ Twice a Manis a fragmented re-imagining of Greek myth transposed to 1960s New York,” said Mark Webber, editor of Film as Film: The Collected Writings of Gregory J. Markopoulos (Visible Press, 2014). “This restoration of Twice a Man through the Avant-Garde Masters Grant program will ensure that the film will be available to be appreciated for generations to come.”

Among the titles green-lighted for preservation are The Doctor’s Dream (1978) by Ken Jacobs (SUNY Binghamton); Film in Which There Appear Sprocket Holes, Edge Lettering, Dirt Particles, Etc. (1966), Institutional Quality (1967), and A Film of Their 1973 Spring Tour Commissioned by Christian World Liberation Front of Berkeley, CA (1974) by Owen Land (Anthology Film Archives); Welcome to Come(1968) by Fred Camper (Northwest Chicago Film Society); and Moods of the Sea (1942) by Slavko Vorkapich (UCLA Film & Television Archive).

Now in its thirteenth year, Avant-Garde Masters is the pioneering program created by The Film Foundation and the NFPF that saves films significant to the development of the avant-garde in America. Funding was provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation. The grants have preserved works by 61 artists, including Kenneth Anger, Shirley Clarke, Bruce Conner, Joseph Cornell, Oskar Fischinger, Hollis Frampton, Ernie Gehr, George and Mike Kuchar, and Carolee Schneemann. The full roster of projects is available here.

The National Film Preservation Foundation is the nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress to help save America’s film heritage. Founded in 1996, the NFPF has supported film preservation in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia and has helped save more than 2,230 films and collections. The NFPF is the charitable affiliate of the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress.

Created in 1990 by Martin Scorsese, The Film Foundation protects and preserves motion picture history—nearly 700 to date—and makes these films available to international festivals and institutions. The foundation's World Cinema Project restores, preserves and distributes neglected films from around the world. TFF teaches young people about film language and history through The Story of Movies, its innovative educational curriculum used by over 100,000 educators nationwide. Joining Scorsese on the board of directors are Woody Allen, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Curtis Hanson, Peter Jackson, Ang Lee, George Lucas, Christopher Nolan, Alexander Payne, Robert Redford, and Steven Spielberg. The Film Foundation is aligned with the Directors Guild of America, a key partner whose president and secretary treasurer also serve on the foundation’s board.