JEFFREY PERKINS

Producer - Director

Jeffrey Perkins is an artist and filmmaker living in New York City.  In 1963, while stationed by the US Air Force in Japan, he struck up a chance friendship with Yoko Ono, which led to an association over the ensuing decades with John Lennon, George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, and the Fluxus Art Movement.  After moving to Los Angeles in the late 1960s, Perkins worked for the Fox Venice Theater, managed Cinematheque 16, and co-founded the psychedelic light show group Single Wing Turquoise Bird, which performed with the Velvet Underground, Yardbirds, Cream, Sly and the Family Stone, and others.  It was in Los Angeles that he developed a creative relationship with abstract expressionist painter Sam Francis.  Making film and audio recordings that date from 1968 to 1977, Perkins created an expansive collection of footage of the artist, both at work in the studio and in intimate conversation.

In 1981, Perkins returned to New York, where for the next twenty years he drove a taxi to support his artistic endeavors.  On the occasion of Francis’s death in 1994, Perkins screened his footage at a memorial program hosted at Anthology Film Archives in New York.  It was then that he returned to the project with the support of Jonas Mekas, who challenged Perkins to revisit and give shape to the remarkable footage that had lain idle for many years.

In the last decade, Perkins has traveled worldwide to present his visual, audio, and conceptual works, as well as to film interviews with friends, family, and professional associates of Francis, gathering material for the now completed documentary ‘The Painter Sam Francis’.

CHARLES CURTIS

Composer

Charles Curtis is an internationally renowned cellist and composer of a wide variety of music, with particular emphasis on the avant-garde.  A graduate of the prestigious Julliard School, Curtis has studied under such masters as vocalist Pandit Pran Nath and composer La Monte Young.  He has released critically acclaimed albums under his own name, with the Charles Curtis Trio, and for John Zorn’s Tzadik label.  Since 2000, Curtis has been a professor of Contemporary Music Performance at the University of California, San Diego. 

MARC VIVES

Editor

Marc Vives is a filmmaker, editor, and video artist living in Brooklyn, NY.