June 10, 201

I am standing, where I know I am safe, in the subterranean bunker of the Harwood

Art Center in ABQ, New Mexico. From 1925-1976 this building was home to the
Harwood Girls School. In 1961 New Mexico Governor Edwin Mechem had the
basement of the Harwood Girls School reinforced with concrete and repurposed as a
fallout shelter for himself and his family. It had only been 16 years since the rst
atomic bomb was detonated 3 hours south in Almagordo. And, although the cement
bunker was never used as a post-apocalyptic home, Mechem may have found
sanctuary in this window-less retreat when, in 1964, he voted against The Civil Rights
Act

In 1991 The Harwood Art Center established itself in the old Harwood Girls School
converting the classrooms into artists’ studios and the common areas into exhibition
halls. At that time, no one thought much about the lower level of the building.

Two years later, when David Nelson - who established Basement Films as an
alternative lm screening collective in 1991 - left New Mexico for Schreveport,
Louisiana, Basement Films received a donation of four thousand 16mm “classroom”
lms from the Albuquerque Public School System. Keif Henley was the new
president of Basement Films, and he negotiated a deal with the Harwood Art Center
to house our growing collection of cinematic ephemera in their fallout shelter.

The word spread quickly that Basement Films was the New Mexico go-to
organization for dead media donations. Our collection grew. Presently I am standing
amongst seven thousand 16mm classroom lms, ve hundred 8mm lms (mostly
home movies), more than one hundred lm projectors, multiple overhead projectors,
thousands of 35mm lmstrips, an archive of audio tapes, and countless VHS tapes.
When the rapture takes place (there are billboards along the high road to Santa Fe
that remind me it will be soon), everything except our over-stuffed collection of
unwanted media will turn to ash.

I am standing in this place because, for the rst time since 1991, Basement Films is
in the process of digitizing our entire collection. With the help of city-paid interns,
several air puri ers, a few dust masks, ashlights and an old computer that has a
workable Excel spreadsheet, we are making this happen!

Although digitizing the media archive is our current summer project, Basement Films
has been involved in a number of different activities over the years. We host lm
loop-making workshops at high schools, we produce our annual “Experiments in
Cinema” international lm festival, we host open-mic style screenings for local lm
artists called Cinemus Publicus (started by Ben Popp who now runs Grand Detour
micro-cinema in Portland), we screen lms from our archive at the Albuquerque
Zoological Park, we stage multi-projector environments in bars, cafes and galleries,
and as a micro-cinema, we have hosted numerous traveling un-dependents such as
Karen Aqua, A/V Geeks, Bruce Baillie, Craig Baldwin, Zoe Beloff, Martha Colburn,
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 Bradley Eros, Helen Hill, Jon Jost, Miranda July, George Kuchar, Jeanne Liotta,
Madcat Film Festival, Bill Morrison, Guillermo Gomez Pena, Eric Saks, Greta Snyder,
and Willie Varela

Basement Films has never secured a permanent screening space (though clearing
out our bunker and making it an underground screening room has always been
tempting), so, as a result, we stage our screenings at site-speci c locations. My
favorite Basement Films screening took place in 1995. Sarah Lewison, Julie Konop,
Florence Dore, and Gina Todus had just completed a bio-diesel road trip and
documentary lm project titled Fat of the Land. We screened their visionary look at
the future of fuel on the side of their F-250 Ford van that was parked on a stretch of
route 66 that runs through the city.

On another occasion - in 2001 - Basement Films was hired to screen lms as part of
the National Museum of Nuclear Science’s grand opening. Taking advantage of the
opportunity, Basement Films offered a poetic gesture to non-violence by projecting
images of domesticity and play on the museum displays that included a reproduction
of Fat Man and Little Boy. I’ll never forget how, at that museum reception, an Asian
family insisted that I take their photograph in front of those two infamous nuclear
bombs

Basement Films is currently Andrew Barrow, Ben Brown, Senaida Garcia, Beth
Hansen, Electra Kennedy-Hall, Keif Henley, Jenette Isaacson, Bryan Konefsky,
Michelle Mellor, Sahra Saedi, Ryan Sciarrotta, and Sean Williams

Happiness is a warm projector,

Bryan Konefsk
President, Basement Film
Artistic director, Experiments in Cinem
www.basement lms.org
www.experimentsincinema.co

Full report to follow.

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