[Frameworks] Michael Wallin RIP

Thu Jan 7 21:35:28 UTC 2016

Thanks for this, Steve. I agree that Decodings is a poetic masterpiece. I showed it every semester for many years in my experimental film classes, and I would rank it among the top ten found footage films ever. Decodings is where I got the Confucius quote,“The way out is via the door; why is it that no one will use this method?,” which I use as the epilogue for my essay “Secession From the Broadcast: Leave the Culture Without Leaving the Country."

> On Jan 7, 2016, at 1:17 PM, Dominic Angerame <dominic.angerame at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Sorry about the grammatical errors on my previous post. For more information of this time period at Canyon Cinema please see
> 
> https://books.google.com/books?id=r2LLdwAXyiYC&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=michael+wallin+and+canyon+cinema&source=bl&ots=OqzmpvpXeP&sig=Os2DmJSp9_EL9LqMmwY42K2pPw0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjv06bfwZjKAhUT62MKHZwQAKoQ6AEILzAD#v=onepage&q=michael%20wallin%20and%20canyon%20cinema&f=false <https://books.google.com/books?id=r2LLdwAXyiYC&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=michael+wallin+and+canyon+cinema&source=bl&ots=OqzmpvpXeP&sig=Os2DmJSp9_EL9LqMmwY42K2pPw0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjv06bfwZjKAhUT62MKHZwQAKoQ6AEILzAD#v=onepage&q=michael%20wallin%20and%20canyon%20cinema&f=false>
> 
> From Scott MacDonald's book about Canyon Cinema
> 
> On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 11:50 AM, Dominic Angerame <dominic.angerame at gmail.com <mailto:dominic.angerame at gmail.com>> wrote:
> I am shocked at this news, since I just spoke with Michael a few days ago about the coming of Bruce Baillie to San Francisco. I met Michael in the Spring of 1980 when I was first hired and we became co-managers. Together we were able to streamline procedures and publish a major catalog. Catalog #5. We had save Canyon from almost total collapse in two short years and helping it become the distinquished film distributors in the world. I enjoy working with Michael and we both seemed to be on the same wavelength in regards to the work at Canyon. When he left Canyon in 1983 we remained good friends and kept in touched. He always encouraged me to continue the efforts to keep Canyon Cinema, which I was able to do until my departure in 2012. One of the most enjoyable things about Michael was that he was fair minded and able to balance conflicts in a reasonable way.
> 
> I am going to miss him greatly, and now Michael is there with the angels.
> 
> Dominic Angerame
> 
> On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 11:31 AM, Steve Polta <steve.polta at gmail.com <mailto:steve.polta at gmail.com>> wrote:
> Hi Scott. Thanks for breaking this. I heard about this a few days ago myself.
> 
> Michael Wallin, a very long-time Bay Area resident, was really an important stalwart figure in the local exp film community, going back to his very close mentor/mentee relationship with Bruce Baillie in the early 1070s, through close involvements with Canyon Cinema, San Francisco Cinematheque ('80s mostly) and of course the many local filmmakers he was close friends with. Along the way he was an occasional teacher at local film schools and was really important to me personally during my second semester in SFAI's Filmmaking MFA program, encouraging personal introspection and self-revelation as an important component of filmmaking; he was actually a licensed therapist and was very much dedicated to facilitating growth and personal healing. While I didn't personally apply this (directly) to my own films this attitude certainly rubbed off on me and informed my personal life very much. And while I would never claim that he was a close close friend, he and I developed a warmth and strong respect for each other that persisted for years. He seemed to inherently value everyone I saw him interact with with sincere respect and seemed to bring to life a warm curiosity and sense of bemused humor and love. Circa 1995 he curated a "favorite films" type of screening at San Francisco Cinematheque which included really oddball films by Anger, Brakhage, George Kuchar, Victor Faccinto, Curt McDowell (the last screening of RONNIE before that film's disappearance) and others which was filled with humor and goofy off-the-wall expressions of quirky polymorphous sexuality. This screening was highly memorable to me. His own film, the sensitive and quite sexually explicit, The Place Between Our Bodies <http://canyoncinema.com/catalog/film/?i=3227> (1975) is considered by some to be a landmark film in gay avant-garde cinema while its 1995 follow-up Black Sheep Boy <http://canyoncinema.com/catalog/film/?i=3228> is a thoughtful, sexy and loving consideration of an approaching middle-age. I personally consider Wallin's Decodings <http://canyoncinema.com/catalog/film/?i=3228> (1988) to be a (largely unrecognized) masterpiece of poetic found-footage filmmaking and one of the most moving and personal uses of that form anyone is likely to see. His work does not seem to be as well known outside of the local community and that's too bad. But locally Michael was really beloved and this loss is actually quite jarring to many of us here in the Bay Area. Wow. Rest In Peace Michael Wallin...
> 
> Steve Polta
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 10:52 AM, Scott Stark <sstark at hi-beam.net <mailto:sstark at hi-beam.net>> wrote:
> Just a note to the community that San Francisco filmmaker Michael Wallin passed away last week.
> 
> A brief bio of Michael and his work can be found on the Canyon Cinema website:
> 
> http://canyoncinema.com/catalog/filmmaker/?i=316 <http://canyoncinema.com/catalog/filmmaker/?i=316>
> 
> Scott
> 
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