Module 0.1 Meet Your Instructor

 


Hi, my name is Denah Johnston and I'm a teacher, writer, filmmaker and curator working as a Film Studies professor and Chair of the Cinema Department at CCSF. I've been working in the department since 2015. With a background in photography I moved to San Francisco in 2001 to attend the graduate Film program at SFAI and study with Ernie Gehr, George Kuchar, Janis Lipzin, Craig Baldwin, Steve Anker and others. I continued my line of inquiry as a post-graduate student at the European Graduate School and completed a PhD in Media & Communication in 2011. 

I worked at Frameline in educational distribution and later as the Executive Director of Canyon Cinema Foundation (Links to an external site.) – the West coast source for experimental film, guiding the organization to attain nonprofit status in 2014. Involved in Bay Area film and arts since 2002, I have worked as programmer and pre-screener for the San Francisco LGBT Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival; organized and moderated a panel on Queer Underground Film supported by the NEA and Warhol Foundation; and presented screenings at institutions, festivals and micro cinemas from San Francisco to Oaxaca, Mexico, Berlin to Melbourne facilitating partnerships with local, international and national organizations to make experimental film more accessible.

At CCSF I have been involved in extensive grant writing to support continued offering of the City Shorts Student Film Festival, Festival of the Moving Image and updating of the Cinema Department's production equipment and extensive curriculum work. With my colleague Kevin Sherman I have built curriculum to offer a Film Studies AA and Certificate of Achievement. Other developments include a re-haul of our Cinema Production AS and creation of Craft Certificates in Production: Cinema Foundations, Cinematography, Scriptwriting, Directing. Pre-Production/Producing. Check out Cinema Department Program offerings (Links to an external site.).

Some of my written work can be seen on agnesfilms.com (Links to an external site.) and in my book No Future Now: A Nomadology of Resistance and Subversion, which considers the core of artistic rebellion, its antecedents and descendants through post-war American avant-garde cinema and the resulting influence on punk and no wave filmmaking and music to the Cinema of Transgression. If you want to know more about my work outside of CCSF take a look at my website (Links to an external site.).

Looking forward to a great class!


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