MIX NYC
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MIX NYC is a not-for-profit organization based in New York City and dedicated to queer experimental film. It is also known as the "MIX festival," for its most visible program, the annual New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival. MIX was founded in 1987 by Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard; it is the longest-running queer film festival in New York. The festival has shown the work of filmmakers such as Barbara Hammer, Nisha Ganatra, Todd Haynes, Jennie Livingston, Teri Rice, Jonathan Caouette, and Isaac Julien. MIX also produces MIXtv, a cable access show; community screenings around the city and at colleges across the country; and the ACT UP Oral History Project. Hubbard & Schulman ran the festival together as a community event from 1987-1991. After the 1991 festival, Schulman wanted to devote more time to her writing. so the 1992 festival was organized by Hubbard and filmmakers Margueite Paris and Jerry Tartaglia. That year also introduced shows programmed by guest curators, who brought new perspectives to the line-up. Notable shows included Our Fanzine Friends, which drew upon the hot trend of queer zines, featuring work by Glenn Belverio and Bruce LaBruce; and FIRE, featuring work form the African diaspora. This last program featued work by Dawn Suggs, Shari Frilot and others. In 1993 Frilot and Karim Ainouz were the co-directors, and introduced many changes, including the name MIX, the production of a catalog (instead of handing our program notes), a new venue (the Kitchen instead of Anthology Film Archives) and a commitment to multicultural presentations and installation work. A stunning program that year was called The 1000 Dreams of Desire, curated by Jim Lyons. It was a special show featuring Teri Rice's "The Kindling Point" and "Les Affaire", at the Ann Street Bookstore in Lower Manhattan, where the peep booths were reprogrammed with experimental video, and 16mm film was projected in a separate room. MIX returned to Anthology in 1994, and combined with DCTV's Lookout Lesbian & Gay Video Festival because DCTV's building was under renovation. Ainouz scaled back his involvement, and Frilot became the definitive voice of MIX, making the organization a home for emerging filmmakers and makers of color. This was signalled by 1994's opening feature, Brincando El Charco, and even more powerfully when 1995's opening and closing events were films by makers of color These films, Vintage: Families of Value by Thomas Allen Harris, and Frilot's own documentary Black Nations/Queer Nations, brought new audiences to MIX. 1996 was the festival's 10th anniversary, and in honor of this milestone MIX presented queer work from the African disaspora at the Victoria Theater in Harlem, in additon to its downtown programs at NYU's Cantor Film Center and the Knitting Factory. The festival closed with the New York Premiere of Chocolate Babies, by Stephen Winter.
Frilot headed MIX through 1996. Her other legacy was a commitment to installation work and the nascent digital realm. Installations were on view in 1993, on the upper floor of the Kitchen. But in 1994, Shu Lea Cheang and Beth Stryker curated Cyberqueer, in the basement galleries of Anthology. Although installations were presented in subsequent years, they never matched these early efforts.
Rajendra Roy was in charge in 1997, when the festival moved to Cinema Village, which was then a single-screen theater on E. 12th Street. Roy brought on Anie Stanley as artistic director in 1998, and as a team they propelled MIX to greater visibility, with more corporate sponsorship, but with less emphasis on the identity politics of the early 1990s. 1998 also saw a sidebar of 8 mm films curated by Stephen Kent Jusick, featuring work by both contemporary makers and old masters, such as Jack Smith, and Andy Warhol's Polavision home movies.
Roy & Stanley stepped down after the 2000 festival, making way for Ioannis Mookas, who took the title of Executive Director. The organization, whose offices had been in the financial district, suffered after 9/11, and Mookas left after overseeing two festivals. MIX as an organization took a new direction in 2003, when it initiated the ACT UP Oral History Project, run by Hubbard and Schulman, and funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation. This new effort gave the organization another aspect, different from being just a film festival. Larry Shea and Stephen Winter took the helm of the festival in 2003. Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation was shephered into being under Winter's supervision, and its premiere as the festival centerpiece was the beginning of its illustrious path to Cannes, the New York Film Festival and a distribution deal with Wellspring in 2004. A large-scale installation called CAke, about garment workers, by Mary Ellen Strom & Ann Carlson, debuted at South Street Seaport as the festival centerpiece. MIX expanded beyond the concept of the annual festival more in late 2004, with the introuduction of MIXtv, which aired weekly on Manhattan Neighborhood Network. Yet MIX was unable to capitalize on the success of Tarnation, and finanacial troubles led Shea to move the festival from November to April 2005, skipping 2004 entirely. MIX began a community screening program, which took work to various neighborhoods and communities, beginning with the Bronx in February 2005.
Larry Shea left MIX after the 2005 festival to devote more time to his video art, and a new team was appointed in the fall, including Andre Hereford, Szu Burgess, Kate Huh and Stephen Kent Jusick. Moving MIX back to its traditional November timeslot was the first decision of the new staff.
In May, 2006, MIX began the Naked Eye Celebrity Camera benefit, auctioning off disposable cameras exposed by artists and celebrities including Laurie Anderson, Gus Van Sant, B.D. Wong, Alec Soth and over 100 others.
