Founded in New York City in 1961 by a group of 22 path-breaking experimental filmmakers (including Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, and Stan Brakhage), The Film-Makers’ Cooperative (a.k.a. The New American Group) is the oldest and largest distributor of independent and avant-garde films and video art in the world. Our historic collection — which consists of nearly 6,000 titles on 8mm, Super 8mm, 16mm, 35mm, video, and digital formats (including VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray) — spans the history of independent and avant-garde cinema, and is available to colleges, universities, libraries, museums, galleries, cinematheques, and film festivals for rental, purchase, or digital license. Public accessibility and non-exclusivity have always been the core of our educational mission, as we work to bring both the history and the future of experimental cinema to audiences in New York and around the world. Founded as a collective “self-help” group for artists whose work was rejected from mainstream distribution channels and subject to censorship, the Film-Makers’ Coop was an early safe haven for filmmakers on the margins. In the 1960s, the organization was a pivotal player in the legal fight for the rights of queer expression in art; its underground screenings likewise inspired Andy Warhol to begin his career as a filmmaker. Many breakout works from the Coop’s early days — such as Kenneth Anger’s SCORPIO RISING (1963), Jack Smith’s FLAMING CREATURES (1963), Warhol’s SLEEP (1964), and John Waters’ MONDO TRASHO (1969) — are now classics of avant-garde cinema, and it was the Film-Makers’ Coop who first put these films into distribution and fought for their right to exist.
The Film-Makers' Cooperative also offers a diverse exhibition and workshop program curated by an array of in-house and outside experts, curators, writers, artists, and scholars. We partner on programming with and lend films to a global network of film, art, and academic institutions. In New York City, this includes The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI), the Public Art Fund, Independent Art Fair, Film at Lincoln Center, Maysles Documentary Center, Light Industry, Millennium Film Workshop, Spectacle Theater, and Anthology Film Archives, among other organizations. We also offer free, public workshops that cover various elements of film craft, and actively support new work from contemporary makers through grant and production assistance. The more than 2,500 artists whose work is represented in our collection include such avant-garde luminaries as Peggy Ahwesh, Michelangelo Antonioni, Sara-Kathryn Arledge, Caroline Avery, Craig Baldwin, Gordon Ball, Scott Bartlett, Katherine Bauer, Zoe Beloff, James Benning, Alan Berliner, Gregg Biermann, Les Blank, Stan Brakhage, Rudy Burckhardt, Doris Chase, Abigail Child, Shirley Clarke, Pola Chapelle, Joseph Cornell, Peter Cramer, Bill Creston, Eduardo Darino, Donna Deitch, Maya Deren, Ed Emshwiller, Bradley Eros, Mary Filippo, Holly Fisher, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Charles Henri Ford, Hollis Frampton, Su Friedrich, Philippe Garrel, Dave Gearey, Ernie Gehr, Jean Genet, Carl Michael George, Silvianna Goldsmith, Bette Gordon, Larry Gottheim, Amy Greenfield, DeeDee Halleck, Curtis Harrington, Henry Hills, Jim Hubbard, Emily Hubley, Faith Hubley, Tessa Hughes-Freeland, Takahiko Iimura, Ken Jacobs, Jon Jost, Marjorie Keller, Karl Kels, Robert Kramer, Peter Kubelka, Standish Lawder, Lana Lin, Jeanne Liotta, Willard Maas, Babette Mangolte, Taylor Mead, Jonas Mekas, Adolfas Mekas, Marie Menken, Bill Morrison, J.J. Murphy, Vivian Ostrovsky, Edward Owens, Laura J. Padgett, Sheila Paige, Suzan Pitt, Jackie Raynal, Jennifer Reeves, Ron Rice, Hans Richter, José Rodríguez-Soltero, Liz Roberts, Barbara Rosenthal, Lynne Sachs, Marja Samsom, Joel Schlemowitz, Carolee Schneemann, Rosalind Schneider, Erica Schreiner, MM Serra, Paul Sharits, Harry Smith, Jack Smith, Michael Snow, Warren Sonbert, Olga Spiegel, Mark Street, Leslie Thornton, Stan VanDerBeek, Peter Von Ziegesar, Joe Wakeman, Jack Waters, Joyce Wieland, and Jud Yalkut, among many others.