RECOGNITION

Dixon Featured in MoMA Retrospective

		Wheeler Winston Dixon, James Ryan Professor of English and chair of film studies

In New York City in 1966, 16-year-old Wheeler Winston Dixon worked among soon-to-be legendary artists like Andy Warhol. They created films for a couple hundred bucks worth of raw film stock, pitched in as others' crew and cast, and often watched and critiqued the products of their work.

"It's an era that if you didn't live through it, you don't understand it," said Dixon, James Ryan Professor of English and chair of film studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "And it's an era that also was so supportive of artists, so kind to artists, that now, when you look at the landscape, it's a very different thing."

Dixon is one of few remaining today who remember that key time for experimental film, and as a historic figure in the genre, New York's Museum of Modern Art honored him with a Retrospective and placed Dixon's original experimental film works in its permanent collection.

Retrospective: Wheeler Winston Dixon was featured April 11-12 at MoMA, when three programs featured some of his films. After that, the films became part of the museum's permanent collection.

"Back in the '60s we were making films not for an audience," Dixon said. "We were making them entirely for ourselves. Some people don't understand that. They expect a narrative and they expect something different. What you hear from people who don't understand art is that art is communication. This is nonsense. Art is anything that you want it to be."

Dixon was born and raised in New Brunswick, N.J., but found in the streets and underground of New York kindred minds and an exciting nexus of art and film, unique personalities and lifestyles. While the early '60s were a "huge explosion of artistic ferment," according to Dixon, that scene began to change when in 1968, a 'Wavelength' was made by Michael Snow, and marked the beginning of what's called structuralist cinema, a style interested in values of light, color and sound and duration. Dixon's style, which is more romantic, became marginalized by film critics and movements like 'The Essential Cinema.'

While studying and teaching film and writing numerous books on film and film history, Dixon emerged as an expert. In 1994, he made What Can I Do? as sort of a rediscovery. The 80-minute 16-mm color film featured an elderly woman who hosts a dinner at her New York apartment one evening and describes her life and relationships. It earned critical acclaim and reopened Dixon's past.

"We ran What Can I Do? at MoMA, four or five times and it was a big success, so that was the beginning of our re-relationship," Dixon said. "Then when my book Exploding Eye came out they asked me to curate the retro of experimental films from their collection and so I did, in conjunction with the book."

"Film is such a fragile medium. And basically I'm holding on to the originals right now. By taking all of my films into their collection, this means they'll be preserved as long as the museum is in existence, and the MoMA is probably the top museum for film in the world, so it's quite an honor."

ENGLISH | FILM STUDIES