Texts

SOME WORDS is a filmic manifesto by Amy Halpern published in an Issue of the magazine New devoted to the members of the Los Angeles Independent Film Oasis collective.

WORDS THAT MELT IN THE MIND is a paper delivered by Amy Halpern at a conference on Image and Text held at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas.

WOMEN BEHIND THE CAMERA by Alexis Krasilovsky (Praeger), made into a feature documentary in 2007, includes an interview with Amy about her experience working in Hollywood as a cinematographer, gaffer and union electrician, excerpted here.

LOS ANGELES FILMFORUM “ALTERNATIVE PROJECTIONS” ORAL HISTORY PROJECT:  This interview, conducted in 2010 by Adam Hyman, was part of an oral history project documenting the history of experimental film in Los Angeles.  The project was sponsored by the Getty Research Institute as part of the 2012 initiative “Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980”.  

The interview covers Halpern’s early life and schooling in New York, her work in the Lynda Gudde Dance Company, her time at Binghamton University and the UCLA Film School, her involvement in the founding and operation of The Collective for Living Cinema in New York and the Independent Film Oasis in Los Angeles, and her experience working on feature film sets in Hollywood as a lighting technician.  The making of the early films THREE PREPARATIONS, PEACH LANDSCAPE, FILAMENT (THE HANDS) and SELF-PORTRAIT AS A CITY is discussed.

DISCUSSION WITH COLLEAGUES: This extended discussion was conducted with Amy Halpern by Kate Brown, Randolph Pitts and Arwa Sara Ibrahim after the group had watched many of Amy’s films together.  The conversation includes discussion of ROLL 1 FOR NANCY, THREE PREPARATIONS, PEACH LANDSCAPE, FILAMENT, FALLING LESSONS, THREE-MINUTE HELLS, ELIXIR, ACCESS TO THE VIEW, INJURY ON A THEME and BY HALVES.

THE MOST TYPICAL AVANT-GARDE: HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF MINOR CINEMAS IN LOS ANGELES, by film historian David James, includes a section on the Los Angeles Independent Film Oasis, a screening collective of which Amy was a founding member.  This section includes an extended passage on Amy Halpern and FALLING LESSONS, excerpted here.

AMY HALPERN 1953 – 2022: A COMPLETE BRIGHT OBJECT IN THE DARK: A memorial remembrance by Mark Toscano, published in Millennium Film Journal.

SLOW FIREWORKS: THE FILMS OF AMY HALPERN: This article, published in Senses of Cinema in January 2023, is based on conversations between Arindam Sen and Amy Halpern in Spain and Greece during June 2022, a few weeks before her death.  They discuss the films PEACH LANDSCAPE, FILAMENT (THE HANDS), SELF-PORTRAIT AS A CITY, CIGARETTE BURN, NEWT PAUSES, I TREMBLE, FALLING LESSONS, SLOW FIREWORKS, THREE-MINUTE HELLS, JANE LOOKING, and MA SEWING.  Arindam Sen is an independent curator and writer.

TECHNOLOGY AND THE MAKING OF EXPERIMENTAL FILM CULTURE by John Powers (Oxford University Press), includes a discussion of Amy’s attention to film grain and use of different 16mm. stocks in the film FILAMENT (THE HANDS), excerpted here.

ON VERTICALITY IN FALLING LESSONS by Sophia Satchell-Baeza, an essay commissioned to accompany a screening of FALLING LESSONS at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art.