Al Wong: Twin Peaks and Screen, Projector and Film

An SFAI alum and educator, Al Wong has explored the bounds of the moving image across his career — experimenting with form, technique, and process — and the nature of the viewing experience. This screening will present Wong’s rarely seen 16mm expanded cinema work Screen, Projector and Film (1977), which foregrounds the nature of viewing and transitions the experience into the work’s primary concern. This piece is paired with a theatrical screening of Wong’s Twin Peaks (1977), currently on view in SFMOMA’s Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Atrium. Twin Peaks traces a slow drive around the San Francisco landmark at different times of day over the course of a year. The screenings will be followed by a conversation between Wong and Brett Kashmere, executive director of Canyon Cinema.

Screen, Projector and Film (1977, 14 min., color, silent, 16mm)
Twin Peaks (1977, 50 min., color, sound, digital)

About the Speakers

Al Wong is a San Francisco native who has dedicated over five decades to creating innovative art across multiple mediums. After earning his Master of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, Wong taught for more than 30 years at institutions including his alma mater, the California State University system, and Mills College. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the UC Berkeley Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Wong’s art has toured nationally and internationally throughout Europe, South America, and Japan. His contributions have been recognized through prestigious awards, including grants from the American Film Institute and National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Flintridge Foundation Visual Artist Award, and most recently, the California Arts Council Legacy Individual Artist Fellowship.

Brett Kashmere is a filmmaker, writer, and curator living in Oakland, California. Over the past 25 years, Kashmere has developed and organized numerous arts initiatives, community projects, and publications. He is executive director of Canyon Cinema Foundation, founding editor of INCITE Journal of Experimental Media, and co-editor of Craig Baldwin: Avant to Live! His films and videos have screened at the BFI London Film Festival, Milano Film Festival, Kassel Dokfest, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Museum of Contemporary Photography, and Wexner Center for the Arts. As a curator, he has created programs and exhibitions nationally and internationally. His writing has appeared in publications such as The Brooklyn Rail, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, The Velvet Light Trap, Millennium Film Journal, Process Cinema: Handmade Film in the Digital Age, Carolee Schneemann: Unforgivable, and The Films of Jack Chambers. He holds a PhD in Film and Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz.

Accessibility Information

Accessibility accommodations such as American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and assisted listening devices are available upon request 10 business days in advance.
Please email publicengagement@sfmoma.org, and we will do our best to fulfill your request.