Artist and poet Wayne Koestenbaum will debut his latest film, The Collective, at a very special evening here, a night that will be a real happening, a series of incitements!

Premised on chance occurrences, collective improvisation, and serendipitous collisions, The Collective is a DIY documentary-essay-experimental-performance-film shot over one day at UnionDocs, inspired by a menu of literary prompts served up by Koestenbaum to a collective of shape-shifting performers. This work is the latest (and longest) in his growing body of poetic, experimental essay films, with a psychedelic signature of lo-fi flair and meticulous formal design. We’re delighted to have Wayne joining us for conversation about this film. We’ll dig into his process, his views about performance, his love of essay films and “personal cinema”; he’ll be joined in conversation by the collaborators featured in the work, Patrick Ljubi Gallagher, Gia Gonzales, and Kyle Dunn, as well as by the esteemed film critic Melissa Anderson.

We’ll kick off the evening with George Kuchar’s I, An Actress (1977), a film that began as a screen test and morphed into a playful improvisation between Kuchar and the actor Barbara Lapsley.

Also we invite you to stick around after the screening of The Collective for drinks and mingling.  And then, nocturnal cinephiles who remain in the room can catch the premiere of Koestenbaum’s X-rated musical film, Shadows of the Soirée, starring Stan Briche. It will be a not-to-be-missed “midnight feature” to close out the night.

Proof of vaccination is required for entry as well as masking indoors for the entirety of the program. The backyard will be open for drinks and socializing.

Wayne Koestenbaum — poet, critic, novelist, artist, filmmaker, performer—has published 21 books, including The Cheerful Scapegoat, Figure It Out, Camp Marmalade, My 1980s & Other Essays, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, Humiliation, Hotel Theory, Circus, Andy Warhol, Jackie Under My Skin, and The Queen’s Throat (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award). His most recent book, Ultramarine, the third volume of his trance trilogy, will be published by Nightboat in February 2022. In 2020 he received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired his literary archive in 2019. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

Photo credit: Jan Rattia

Gia Gonzales is a poet in New York City, where she was born. A former co-curator of the Segue Reading Series, her work has most recently appeared in No Issue, Femmescapes, & Bomb Cyclone, and variously with the Poetry Project. Her first chapbook is forthcoming from Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs. She is managing editor at Nightboat Books.

Patrick Ljubi Gallagher is a Brooklyn-based performer who grew up in Athens, Ohio. He has danced in works by Lucinda Childs, Andy de Groat, and Yvonne Rainer. Patrick has also performed with Patti Bradshaw, Catherine Galasso, Patricia Hoffbauer, Reid & Harriet, Cathy Weis, and Kathy Westwater, among others. Patrick is in demand as a dance musician (piano), and currently plays at Mark Morris, the Juilliard School, and Tisch Dance. Patrick recently accompanied a reading of a new musical, Paradise Lost in Space, at the Player’s Club. He appears in filmmaker David Michalek’s SlowDancing/TrioA, and in an episode of At Home with Amy Sedaris, as a dancing penguin. Patrick is an alum of Sarah Lawrence College.

Kyle Dunn is an actor and a writer in New York City. He recently appeared in the film BALANCES (Dir. Guy-Paul Delisfort, 2021), the Hulu/Discovery+ series EVIL LIVES HERE (2021), and TRASH BLOSSOMS, the world’s first ever playlet (Dir. Wayne Koestenbaum, 2021). Before that he worked with the Atlantic Theater Company in 2020 and performed in the opera CARMEN (Source Theatre, DC; 2019). Kyle will be on stage again in January 2022 in the play ROOM 417, a new work from NY-NDA Theater Group. Recent essays have appeared in print in the DRUNKEN CANAL and online at HILL RAG.

Melissa Anderson is the film editor and lead film critic of 4Columns. Her monograph on David Lynch’s Inland Empire has just been published by Fireflies Press as part of its Decadent Editions series.