Tough Stuff from the Buff: Experimental, Activist & Diary Film/Video from the Fringes of Buffalo, New York

experimentalfilm, curating






Co-curated with Dave Gracon & Marc Moscato
Part of the Experiments in Cinema Film Festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico
Year: 2008 - 2009


When I moved to Portland in 2007 as a transplant from Buffalo and a product of the University at Buffalo’s Department of Media Study, I met two others with similar rust belt media art backgrounds: Marc Moscato and Dave Gracon. Together we curated a program of films about the city of Buffalo, produced by artists in the 1990s and 2000s. The program included work by: Gabriella Citriniti, Tony Conrad, Terry Cuddy, Critical Art Ensemble, Chris Ernst, David Gracon, Stephanie Gray, Paris Henderson, Esther Johnson, Meg Knowles, Marc Moscato, Julie Perini, The Real Dream Cabaret, and Kelly Spivey, and it includes a 1980s commercial promoting Buffalo by WKBW. Marc and Dave took the film on the road with a bike tour in the summer of 2008. A few years later Gracon and I co-authored a short essay, “Representing the City of No Illusions: Reflections on the Tough Stuff from the Buff Film & Video Tour” for the collection Ineffably Urban: Imaging Buffalo, edited by Miriam Paeslack, Ashgate Press.