artist, ally
But this is a gorgeous crowd, at my May screening at Parkside Lounge. See my earlier post: Readings at Parkside. The party atmosphere at the Parkside set the mood for the screening of my writers series of videos, including video portraits of Joe Westmoreland, Laurie Weeks, Kevin Killian & Cedar Sigo, Leslie Scalapino, and Eileen Myles, covering a period from 1998 to 2018.
[click to enlarge]
Pixelated Lesbian Mixtape: Azian Nurudin’s Wicked Times (1986-1999)
Azian Nurudin is someone I worked with in San Francisco in my grad student days and beyond. Her work was recently celebrated in the Queer East Film Festival 2026 with a screening of videos, some of which I worked on, and all of which I love and am indebted to for their absolute non-apologetic bravery and intelligence. Thanks, Azian!
I wrote a brief essay about Azian’s work for the Queer East catalogue, which I have published below:
“I believe Azian Nurudin’s video work from the 1980s and ‘90s provides possible solutions to the global disasters wrought by late-stage patriarchy, such as those we are currently experiencing. Her content shifts the center of the then-current feminist discussions about colonialism, sex, justice, human rights – discussions that radiated ideology – to expressions of refusal and rage. Azian gives us the beauty of the experimental form in pieces such as Sinar Durjana (Wicked Radiance) (1991), and Bitter Strength: Sadistic Response Version (1992). In Malaysian Series 1-6, the performance of rage shifts the central argument vigorously from personal to geo-political, providing a visceral response to colonialism and the patriarchal death-wish.
“Those of us working in video together in San Francisco were creating a cohesive movement of feminist and queer experimental video without quite realizing the singularity of the moment. We shared equipment, cast members, and crew. Leslie Singer had a VHS camcorder that could turn out special effects and generate titles; Azian and I shared a Fisher-Price pixelvision camcorder that we purchased together for about $95. I did camera for Nancy’s Nightmare (1989) and What Do Pop Art, Pop Music, Pornography and Politics Have To Do With Real Life? (1990). And when I was making my own video Grapefruit (1989) about Yoko Ono, Azian agreed to play George Harrison. She insisted, however, on wearing sunglasses in every scene, weaving a new thread of visual humor into the piece.
“Azian’s work is raw as well as sophisticated, immediate as well as reflecting experience and contemplation. Process, community, performance in conjunction, clicking into place.”
Cecilia Dougherty
Just a few photos from the May 2026 CSI Film Festival. The festival showed 13 films by students in the Video Editing, Cinematography, Non-Linear, Thesis, and Workshop classes. The work at this year’s festival showed a lot of ingenuity, hard work, thoughtfulness, and some crazy (yet well-produced) fun. Many of my students in this festival – happy to have these great photos of them!
317 E. Houston St., New York City, Tuesday, May 5, 7:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.
Screening of my Writers Series of intimate video portraits. The works include Joe, 2018, with Joe Westmoreland; Kevin and Cedar, 2002, with Kevin Killian and Cedar Sigo; Eileen, 2000, with Eileen Myles; Lesie, 1998, with Leslie Scalapino; and Laurie, 1998, with Laurie Weeks. Total running time is about 45 minutes. I love these writers!
Parkside Link: https://tenteditions.com/Cecilia-dougherty
Afterwards, I’m discussing the videos with Lia Gangitano, excellent curator and gallerist at Participant Inc. in NYC, who has been showing my work since 1998, with a several-day screening event at Threadwaxing Space in lower Manhattan.
Ann Stephenson, who curates the Readings at Parkside series was generous enough to ask about the Writers Series. This is the first time they will have all been screen together. Thank you, Ann!
The Parkside Lounge is a neighborhood bar with music and events venue in the back room. It has a friendly neighborhood vibe. People of all ages and stripes enjoying a pint, enjoying each other’s company, attending readings by contemporary greats, and now, there’s a video screening! I look forward to seeing you there.
Curated by Elisabeth Subrin
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 at 7pmLight Industry, 361 Stagg Street, Suite 407, Brooklyn
German Song, Sadie Benning, 1995, digital projection, 6 mins
An Epic: Falling Between the Cracks, Nancy Andrews, 1995, digital projection, 6 minsTrue Confessions of an Artist, Kirsten Stoltmann, 1994, digital projection, 5 mins
The Fight, Jeanine Oleson, 1995, digital projection, 3 mins
Sapphire and the Slave Girl, L. Franklin Gilliam, 1995, digital projection, 17 mins
I, Bear, Hendl Helen Mirra, 1995, digital projection, 6 mins
Dear Mom, Tammy Rae Carland, 1995, digital projection, 3 mins
aletheia, Tran T. Kim-Trang, 1992, digital projection, 16 mins
Chronicles of a Lying Spirit (by Kelly Gabron), Cauleen Smith, 1992, 16mm, 6 mins
The Girl’s Nervy, Jennifer Reeves, 1995, 16mm, 5 mins
My Failure to Assimilate, Cecilia Dougherty, 1995, digital projection, 20 mins
Presented with Video Data Bank
The program:
In 1995, after the rise of Third Wave feminism but before the social and political realignments of the internet, artistElisabeth Subrin organized a screening of films and videos entitled No More Sweets For You. The program firstshowed at the Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago, then toured to Hallwalls in Buffalo and the MIX festival in NewYork City. Though each lineup differed, many of the core offerings were by American women who, like Subrinherself, were under 30. Seen today, it reveals a rich (and still, in many ways, underappreciated) vein of feministexperimental cinema at the end of the 20th century.
The works concern thwarted connections and, as Subrin put it at the time, “the fantasies, trauma andschizophrenia of solo-ness,” but the program also suggests an intensely collaborative milieu. Its artists wereassociated in numerous ways—as colleagues or lovers or friends—and traces of these relationships can be seenin the credits: Tammy Rae Carland appears as an interviewee in Cecilia Dougherty’s video, Subrin and KirstenStoltmann worked on Franklin Gilliam’s tape; and in turn Gilliam, Stoltmann, and Sadie Benning were involvedwith the production of Subrin’s own Swallow, completed that same year and featured in the original program.
Unlike boomer feminist celebrations of community and sisterhood, the screening is haunted by the specter offailure and figures of isolation. Consider the wandering latchkey kid of Benning’s German Song, the Nauman-eque artiste depicted in Kirsten Stoltmann’s Confessions, or the mop-haired child subject of Hendl Helen Mirra’s I,Bear. Nowhere are film or video employed as simple tools of communication; both celluloid and electronic imagesare likewise approached as malleable, tactile forms, made visually complex through multiple layers ofremediation: documents collaged and animated, videos re-taped off monitors, images scratched, frozen, andpainted-over. The viewer can sense lone psyches wrestling with the crises of their day, in the cellular isolation of alate-night editing suite. Identities are metabolized by, and drift between, a range of audiovisual formats andprocesses, including Super-8, manually-edited 16mm, analog video, Pixelvision, and digital effects.
With a typically Gen-X dialectical ambivalence, these artists collectively argue that isolation can simultaneouslyfoster both mental destabilization and social resistance. “In an era of corporate grunge, queer commodification,empowerment politics and right-wing cyborgs,” Subrin asks in her original program notes, “how do theunassimilated survive without being smashed, named or forced to participate?” The answer provided by No MoreSweets for You: it’s personal, it’s deep, and it’s complicated.