Jeffrey Skoller
PhD Northwestern University, MFA San Francisco Art Institute, Associate Professor of Film & Media
Address
Film & Media
6218 Dwinelle Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
E-mail: jasko@berkeley.edu
Bio
Jeffrey Skoller is a filmmaker and writer. He teaches film/video production and courses on the histories and theories of experimental/avant-garde film and video art, documentary/non-fiction film, Third Cinema, tactical, activist and other counter-media practices. In research and image-making, I explore relationships between film and contemporary art, the radical aesthetics and praxis of the political avant-garde; representations of history and time in experimental film and video, and contemporary cinematic hybrids such as the essay film, experimental documentary, animated documentary and video installation and expanded cinema.
Courses taught include: Documentary film, Avant-garde film, The Image of Time: Cinematic Temporalities, From History To Entropy: Making History In Cinema, Political Modernism and Beyond: Radical Formalism in Film and New Media, The Religious Imagination in Cinema, Graduate Production Seminar in Video and Moving Image Media Production.
Skoller’s films have been exhibited in museums, universities and festivals internationally. Screenings and exhibitions include: The Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley; Portland Art Museum, OR; The Gene Siskel Film Center, Art Institute of Chicago, The SF Cinematheque; Museum of the Moving Image, NY; JP Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, Whitney Museum, NY; P.S. 1, NY; Anthology Film Archives, NY; Flaherty Film Seminar, NY; Arsenal Kino, Berlin; Mannheim Film Festival, Germany; The Latin American Film Festival, Havana; National Film Theatre, London. His essays and articles on experimental film and video have appeared in Film Quarterly; Discourse; Afterimage; Cinematograph; New Art Examiner among others. Skoller was part of the founding faculty of the Dept. of Film/Video/New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was Director of the Cinema and Media Studies Program at Wellesley College.
Books:
POSTWAR: The Films of Daniel Eisenberg ed., London: Blackdog Press. 2010
Shadows, Specters, Shards: Making History in Avant-Garde Film University of Minnesota Press. Nov. 2005.
Recent Articles, Book Chapters & Catalogue Essays:
“ReAnimator: Embodied History, and the Post-Cinema Trace in Ken Jacobs’ Digital Composites” Pervasive Animation AFI Film Reader, Routledge Forthcoming, 2012
Guest Editor Special Issue: “Making it (Un)real: Contemporary Theories and Practices in Documentary/Animation.” Animation: An interdisciplinary Journal. Vol 6, No. 3. London: Sage Press, Nov, 2011
“Fragments of an Inheritance: Contingencies of History in ‘Cooperation of Parts’” POSTWAR: The Films of Daniel Eisenberg, Skoller, ed., London: Blackdog Press. 2010
“Memories of the Revolution: Filmmaking as Mourning Work” Spanish Translation in the book: Los Fantasmas de Ñancahuazú Buenos Aires: Viper’s Tongue Books, 2010.
“The Place of October: An Exchange with James Elkins” The State of Art Criticism James Elkins, ed. Routledge Press. 2007
“Greg Sholette: Do It yourself Art Action Kit!” Gregory Sholette Selected Projects 1980-2003 catalogue essay, Clifford Gallery, Colgate University 2004. (Translated into Russian for publication 2008)
“Landscapes at the End of History: Tony Sinden’s Installation Dichotomy” Tony Sinden: Everything Must Go-Installation, Video and Film London: The British Arts Council. 2003.
“The Domestic Lives of Lynn Marie Kirby: Some Notes (with interruptions) on Six Films” Discrete and Continuous Boundary Problems: Lynn Marie Kirby Retrospective Monograph. SF. Foundation for Art in Cinema 2002.
Selected Film, Video & Photographic works:
The Promise of Happiness Pt 2 Nicaragua 30mins, Video, 2011 (in-progress)
“Eisenstein’s ‘Das Kapital” Photo Installation: The Imaginary Archive and The Wellington Collaboratorium 2010
The Promise of Happiness Pt 1. Vietnam 32 mins. Video, 2007
Please, Please, Please, (For JB) w/Mark Bartlett. Photo & text installation, 2007
The Weather is Clearing Up! 4mins. Video 2006
The Unquiet: Speaking Mauscheln* 3-1/2-hr. segments. Video,1997
The Malady Of Death, 43 Mins., 16mm, Color, Sound, 1994
Gulf Crisis TV Project, Paper Tiger/ Deep Dish, Segment On U.S. Jews Opposing Gulf War 1991
Nicaraguan Video Series, Prod. With Xchange TV Collective 1986
Nicaragua: Hear-Say/See-Here, 65 Mins., 16mm, Color, Sound. 1986