- Wheeler Winston Dixon
Wheeler Winston Dixon (born
March 12 ,1950 ) is best known as a writer of film history, theory and criticism. He is the author of numerous books on film, as well as a professor who has taught atRutgers University , New Brunswick;The New School in New York; and theUniversity of Amsterdam , Holland. He received his Ph.D. in English fromRutgers University in 1982. He is also an American experimental filmmaker and is currently the James Ryan Endowed Professor of Film Studies, Professor of English at theUniversity of Nebraska, Lincoln . He was born inNew Brunswick, New Jersey .Film Criticism
He is, with
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster , Editor-in-Chief of theQuarterly Review of Film and Video . He is also a prolific author of books of film criticism. His newest books as author or editor include:
*Hollywood Directors (forthcoming,Wallflower Press )
*Film Noir and The Cinema of Paranoia (forthcoming,Edinburgh University Press andRutgers University Press .)
*A Short History of Film, with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster (Rutgers University Press , andI.B. Tauris , 2008)
*Film Talk: Directors at Work (Rutgers University Press , 2007)
* Visions of Paradise: Images of Eden in the Cinema (Rutgers University Press , 2006)
* American Cinema of the 1940s: Themes and Variations (Rutgers University Press , 2006)
* Lost in the Fifties: Recovering PhantomHollywood (Southern Illinois UP, 2005)
* Film and Television After9/11 (editor; Southern Illinois UP, 2004)
* Visions of the Apocalypse: Spectacles of Destruction in American Cinema (Wallflower, 2003)
* Straight: Constructions ofHeterosexuality in the Cinema (State University of New York Press, 2003)
* Experimental Cinema: The Film Reader, co-edited with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster (Routledge, 2002).Dixon’s other books include Disaster and Memory: Celebrity Culture and the Crisis of Hollywood Cinema (
Columbia University Press , 1999); The Exploding Eye: A Re-Visionary History of the American Experimental Cinema (State University of New York Press, 1997), on 1960s American experimental filmmakers; The Films ofJean-Luc Godard (State University of New York Press, 1997), on the life and works of the noted French filmmaker; and The Transparency of Spectacle: Meditations on the Moving Image (State University of New York Press Series in Postmodern Culture, 1998), on the impact of changing technologies (especially computer generated imagery and digital technology) in cinema and television.Dixon has also written the books Re-Viewing British Cinema: 1900-1992 (1994) from State University of New York Press, a critical anthology on the history of the British film; It Looks at You: Notes on the Returned Gaze of Cinema, also from SUNY UP, on recent developments in interactive cinema; and The Early Film Criticism of
François Truffaut (Indiana University Press, 1993).As editor of the
State University of New York Press Cultural Studies in Cinema / Video Series, Dixon created a new group of books on cinema/video theory and practice. Published volumes thus far include PostNegritude Visual and Literary Culture by Mark A. Reid (1997); The Folklore of Consensus: Theatricality in the Italian Commercial Cinema, 1930-1943 by Marcia Landy (1998); Celluloid Nationalism and Other Melodramas: From Post-Revolutionary Mexico to fin de siglo Mexamérica by Susan Dever (2003); and Bad: Infamy, Darkness, Evil, and Slime on Screen, Murray Pomerance, ed. (2004). The series is still ongoing, and will conclude in 2009.Dixon is the author of more than seventy articles on film theory, history and criticism, along with numerous book and video reviews, which have appeared in
Cinéaste ,Interview ,Film Quarterly ,Literature/Film Quarterly ,Films in Review ,Post Script ,Journal of Film and Video ,Film Criticism ,New Orleans Review ,Classic Images , Film and Philosophy and numerous other journals.Dixon is on the editorial board of the journal
Film Criticism , and was a member of the editorial board ofCinema Journal until 2003. He also presented a paper, “The End of Cinema,” at the Columbia University Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation on February 12, 2004.He now devotes the majority of his time to teaching and lecturing, as well as writing and editing books. His latest project, with
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster , is a new book entitledA Short History of Film , published in 2008 byRutgers University Press .Also in 2008, Dixon appeared in the documentary "
Jean-Luc Godard : A Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma," as part of a three-disc, four-film box set of Godard's filmsPassion ,Prénom Carmen ,Détective andHélas pour moi , released byLionsgate Films , offering commentary on Godard's later works. Dixon also contributes film reviews toAir America Radio on an occasional basis.A complete list of Dixon’s publications can be found in the MLA International Bibliography, available on CD-ROM, or as an Internet database. He is also the co-founder, with Michael Downey, of the proto-punk band
Figures of Light , formed in 1970; the recordings of this band are available onNorton Records .Filmmaking
In the late 1960s, Dixon was part of the Experimental film scene in New York, also called the "Underground Film" movement, while also working as a writer for
Life Magazine and Andy Warhol'sInterview magazine. He later went to London, and briefly became part of theNew Arts Lab in Drury Lane, organizing a screening of his own work, and making short films. Back in the United States, he worked with the pioneering video groupTVTV in 1976, during the group's Los Angeles period, editing many of the episodes of their seriesSupervision forPBS , and later the group's final effort,The TVTV Show , made in conjunction withNBC . On his own, in the United States and Europe, he made numerous short and medium length experimental films from 1969 to 1976, and made his last film to date, a feature,Squatters , in France in 1995.Dixon’s films and videotapes have been screened at
The Museum of Modern Art , TheBritish Film Institute , TheWhitney Museum of American Art ,The Jewish Museum ,The San Francisco Cinématheque ,The New Arts Lab , The Collective for Living Cinema, and The Kitchen Center for Experimental Art.In the Fall of 1997, Dixon delivered four lectures at
The Museum of Modern Art in New York, to celebrate the publication of his book The Exploding Eye: A Revisionary History of 1960s American Experimental Cinema, in conjunction with a series of screenings of classic experimental films he curated for the occasion.On April 11-12, 2003, Dixon was honored with a retrospective of his films at The
Museum of Modern Art in New York. At that time, his films were acquired for the permanent collection of the Museum, in both print and original format.Filmography (Existing Films Only)
* "Wedding" (1969)
* "Quick Constant and Solid Instant" (1969)
* "The DC Five Memorial Film" (1969)
* "London Clouds" (1970)
* "Serial Metaphysics" (1972)
* "Waste Motion" (1974)
* "Tightrope" (1974)
* "Stargrove" (1974)
* "Gaze" (1974)
* "An Evening with Chris Jangaard" (1974)
* "Dana Can Deal" (1974)
* "Damage" (1974)
* "Un Petit Examen, and Not So Damned Petit Either, or, the Light Shining Over the Dark" (1976)
* "Madagascar, or, Caroline Kennedy's Sinful Life in London" (1976)
* "The Diaries" (1986)
* "Distance" (1987)
* "Women Who Made the Movies" (1992)
* "What Can I Do?" (1994)
* "Squatters" (1995)External links
* [http://eng-wdixon.unl.edu/wdixon.html Wheeler Winston Dixon's Home Page]
*imdb name|id=0229003|name=Wheeler Winston Dixon
* [http://www.hi-beam.net/mkr/wd/wd-bio.html Official Site for Dixon's Films]
* [http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/27/wheeler_winston_dixon.html An interview with Dixon from "Senses of Cinema"]
* [http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/07/43/last-days-film.html Article by Dixon: "Vanishing Point: The Last Days of Film" in "Senses of Cinema"]
* [http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/10509208.html Official Quarterly Review of Film and Video Homepage]
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