[Frameworks] Howard Guttenplan (April 6th, 1934 - February 23rd, 2015)

[David Baker]

Howard Guttenplan and the Millennium Film Workshop will be forever  
inextricably linked.
With absolute devotion until the very end, Howard dedicated his energy  
and expertise to keeping the Millennium going.
With inexplicable grace he withstood the recent indignities he was  
made to suffer.
During his tenure as Executive Director, Howard single handedly  
demonstrated acute discernment
in his "Personal Cinema" programs which made a place for the most  
accomplished and celebrated film artists
to project their work in close proximity with totally unknown makers  
of consequence.
In a kind of fearless visionary egalitarianism Howard insisted on a  
monthly Open Screening program
which functioned as an important portal for the self-taught, socially  
misaligned and/or politically maladroit outsider
to be discovered and to assimilate into the experimental film  
community regardless of resume or lack thereof.
Howard's Millennium was open to both the big fish and the little fish,  
the somebody's and the nobody's
in vibrant aesthetic exchange.
His great love was not film per se but the continuum of the  
experimental film medium,
the linked progression of forms from one artist to another over time,
with invention and innovation as its most telling attribute.
The Millennium Film Workshop Archives will testify abundantly to the  
astonishing procession of makers
who made this love manifest. Howard welcomed and treated each of these  
artists with uncommon respect.
Howard's own film oeuvre is a shining example of what is possible
when one is totally dedicated to a highly evolved form of truth and  
beauty.
In all these ways he changed my life.

-DB