Greta Snider, Experimental Filmmaker

Historical Essay

by Paul Grammatico

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Video by Paul Grammatico

Professor Snider is an experimental filmmaker. Her earlier work on 16mm includes a collection of audio and visual experiences that combines photography, found footage, and her own experiences of the San Francisco punk scene in the early 1990s. Her work includes experiments with simultaneous soundtracks (Blood Story, 1990), engaging personal accounts of a scraped-together journey with friends (Portland, 1996), and an audio travelogue of the San Francisco punk scene. Professor Snider's more recent work includes, in collaboration with Johunna Grayson, a series of slide show projections comprised of hand-processed photographs and stereoscopic images. The series is described as an update on the ‘campy Viewmaster format’, riffing on the concept of the travelogue to present the unseen and underground aspects. Subjects range from forgotten aspects of the everyday (“old man bars”, flowers, parts of the body) to the extreme (a Viewmaster series of atomic test blasts). Snider’s films explore the importance of small memories, retrieving pieces of ephemera from the underground and re-presenting them on screen.

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Clip of Blood Story(1990)

Courtesy of Greta Snider

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Clip of Portland(1996)

Courtesy of Greta Snider

I had the pleasure of having Professor Snider as a teacher at California College of Arts and Crafts (now simply California College of the Arts).