About Us

In Fall of 1971 artist Robert Frank came to Rochester NY to conduct a course on filmmaking at the recently established alternative art school Visual Studies Workshop By the time he came to Rochester Frank had made seven films and was inproduction on the autobiographical fiction About Me A Musical while preparing to shoot the controversial Rolling Stones documentary Cocksucker Blues In need of money to shoot his next film Frank proposed a nontraditional course to friend Nathan Lyons suggesting the students work together to make their own movie with Frank acting as more of a collaborator than an instructor Franks approach to working with the group of six students was simple load up a camera and start shooting the world around you including yourselves The resulting 38 minute film is a valuable portrait of a creative collaboration between artists and a stimulating document of what Frank refers to as the chaos of the present