While students and faculty have always experimented with various mediums (hand-tinting photos was big in the 1800s), the study of film and video was initiated at Cooper by Robert Breer and Bill Creston in 1971, and further developed by Breer, and Sandra Moore through the 70s and 80s. Originally grouped under the department of "communications" with photography and video, Film and Video acquired independent status under Bill Creston around 1981. The administration had tried to shut down the study of film at Cooper, as they claimed that the school made an over-commitment to film production too unrelated to the goals of the School of Art, with bigger film schools such as N.Y.U. nearby. In response, students protested by occupying the Dean's office until a compromise was reached. Film and Video at Cooper then defined itself to relate more to the "emphasis on the plastic nature of the medium and away from conventional narrative and documentary filmmaking."
Experimental film was initially doubted by the mainstream and "experimental" means many things (see: Experimental Cinema: A Problem of Definition by Anna Gronau (1979)). Early experimental filmmakers, such as Barbara Hammer, experienced difficulty receiving funding for their projects, but still were able to make exciting, fresh work. The rise of experimental film in the 1960s was a crucial moment in art history because of its non-commercial, unconventional, challenging nature, and open attitudes towards abstraction and the possibilities of film.
The stories of these and many more film-making faculty and students live in The Cooper Union Archives. Below are just a few highlights!
The Alfred Wertheimer audiovisual collection presents a large and well-rounded portrait of the artist's career in film. After graduation from The Cooper Union in 1951, Wertheimer made his name as one of the first photographers of Elvis, and later went on to become a prolific cinematographer.
This collection consists of student film produced for Cooper classes and featured in annual exhibitions between 1982 and 2011. Films in this collection are in VHS or DVD format.
Digitized scan of a silent film produced by The Cooper Union and its students documenting time spent at the college's onetime New Jersey campus, known as Green Camp. Date of the film is unknown, but scenes within it appear to be cut from various years and classes.
Francisco Bello graduated from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2002. As an Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, Bello has been involved in creating many films including “Salim Baba," "War Don Don," “Code of the West,” and "The First Wave.”
