was a 1970s Boston television series that for almost ten years offered independent filmmakers a chance to show and discuss their work on a commercial (ABC-TV) affiliate station. The series was developed and hosted by filmmaker Robert Gardner (
), who was Chairman of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies and Director of the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard for many years.
The Screening Room Experimental Collection includes the following episodes:
One of the founders of the San Francisco avant-garde film movement, Bruce Bailie's works are in the Library of Congress collection and are considered national treasures. He appeared on Screening Room in April 1973.
Often called "the father of West Coast independent cinema," James Broughton (1913-1999) considered himself to be, first and foremost, a poet. He visited Screening Room in April, 1977.
Ed Emshwiller started out as an abstract expressionist painter and an award-winning science fiction illustrator before becoming a major figure in avant-garde cinema and the experimental film movement of the 1960s and '70s. He visited Screening Room in July 1975.
A major figure in the American experimental film movement of the 1960s and '70s and a widely published theorist, celebrated American experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton appeared on Screening Room in January 1977, to discuss his work and screen his films, as well as some excerpts and footage from a work in progress.
Professor of art history, photographer, and inventor Standish Lawder and distinguished philosopher Stanley Cavell visited Screening Room in January 1973. Here, Lawder demonstrates his home-made optical printer and screens his films as he, Gardner, and Cavell discuss the intellectual and psychological implications of his filmic manipulations.
Filmmaker, film critic, archivist, poet, lecturer and curator Jonas Mekas is one of the leading figures of American avant-garde film and video. He appeared on Screening Room in October 1981 to discuss the film preservation efforts of Anthology Film Archives and show and discuss his own work as well as that of other filmmakers, including Bruce Bailie, Maya Deren, and Joseph Cornell.
In March 1977, honored avant-garde coreographer, dancer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer appeared on Screening Room with film scholar and author Deac Rossell, to screen and discuss excerpts from her film Kristina Talking Pictures.
Canadian Michael Snow has worked in painting, sculpture, and music as well as film, where he has proved one of the most renowned and influential of all experimental filmmakers. He visited Screening Room in March 1977.