In this week’s episode of The Lo-Down Culture Cast, MM Serra joins host Traven Rice to talk about her career as an avant garde and experimental filmmaker. Serra has been based on the Lower East Side for over three decades. She is also an author, curator, and professor at Parsons at the New School. For 32 years, she was the Executive Director of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, the world’s oldest and largest archive of independent film.
Serra has created over 34 films, and her first five films were preserved and digitized by Anthology Film Archives. In Fall 2010, Serra co-curated, Counter Culture, Counter Cinema: An Avant Garde Film Festival, a seven program, three day event at the Pacific Design Center with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
In 2007 – 2008, Serra was the curator of a six-part experimental film series titled “Cinema of the Unusual” at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. Her film, Chop Off,premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art’s Documentary Fortnight Series in 2009.
In 2021, her films were screened at various international festivals and venues, including a retrospective entitled MM Serra: Portraits curated by Devon Narine-Singh.
