Experimental Curator: The Sally Dixon Story

(scratching sound) (air whooshing) (film reel flapping) (bang sound) - Sally Dixon is important because she was a filmmaker maker maker.

(dramatic guitar music) (film reel flapping) (dramatic band music) In the '60s, people were really just kind of experimenting and being first exposed to what we now know as avant-garde film.

(indistinct music) It was a hippie, counter-cultural scene.

(woman giggles) - We were poor artists, drawn to work in film, with very little money, but also enjoying the freedom of making your own films your own way, on your own money.

(waves splashing) The movies were deadly.

(film reel flapping) There was political oppression, like you can't believe it.

- There was so much raw emotion in the films, and different perception.

- Experimental filmmaking as an art form, a lot of people didn't understand it.

It was like a foreign language to them.

They were like, right, they didn't have the patience.

- There was a need.

They needed filmmakers when making films, and I wanted to see those films, and many others wanted to see and the filmmakers wanted that people would see them, and nobody wanted to show them just because they were not Hollywood movies.

Sally, she understood that very early, and she began promoting and bringing it to their attention, the different poetic non-narrative forms of cinema.

- Sally was so present and focused and warm, and identified with the filmmakers and their work in a completely devotional way.

- Dixon was this enabler who put people in contact with each other.

- Sally brought avant-garde filmmakers together and allowed them to be seen as an arts movement.

- She was magic.

She brought a kind of energy into the avant-garde, and actually, I think it's still there.

- She's often said that she wanted to just ride the wave of the whole thing.

And that's what she did.

(film reel flapping) (ambience sound) (birds chirping) (car engine roaring) (indistinct chatter) Here, look through there.

See, you can see through there.

Look through here, let me show you here.

Watch.

I'm gonna put my eye there, I want you to look through there okay?

Look through with your eye.

There you go.

(film reel flapping sound) - Oh God.

(film reel flapping sound) - [Alexander] There you go.

You're making a movie.

- Yes.

- [Alexander] Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes you are.

(Sally laughs) (film reel flapping) Sally over the last five years, has lost her ability to communicate verbally.

Since she is no longer able to talk for herself, all that remains is for her past actions and her history to speak for her.

And for all of those lives that she touched, and all of those people that she helped along the way, and all that she gave to the world, it's an opportunity to let them speak for her and about her.

And when you learn about Sally, you will learn about that entire world.

(people laughing) (film reel flapping) (gentle guitar music) - She was born in Seattle, Sally was raised in the San Francisco area.

Her family were a kind of San Francisco royalty of sorts, it's true.

- She was my big sister, and she took care of me.

This is Ann, me of course, and then Sally.

She had a lot of freckles, I don't know if she has them now, but boy, she was a freckles.

Sally was a leader at the neighborhood, she would organize things and we'd all follow her.

I think Sally was just born that way.

She had the imagination and she would let it run.

She was an artist, she was painting.

She went to Pennsylvania College for Women.

She met Jack Dixon, he was part of the Mesta family.

Mesta Machine was one of the steel mills in Pittsburgh.

He fell in love with her and he asked her to marry him.

Sally was married two months shy of her 19th birthday.

(film reel flapping) - [Sally] I got into film, it's where I was living, I was out on the country.

So I was filming my sons these little boys, I was making movies.

And I was loving doing it.

- Sally was very much a suburban housewife, I think she tried very hard to fill that role.

It's a role that she ultimately felt disempowered her.

She felt like she had more to live and she felt like she had more to say.

Sally divorced my father in the late '60s when divorce was still a very bad word at that point in time.

Back then, it carried a stigma.

That stigma fueled her.

(air whooshing) (birds chirping) (gentle guitar music) We moved from suburban Fox Chapel, which is just outside of Pittsburgh, into Shadyside which is in the city.

She definitely became part of the counterculture.

- I think she all of a sudden found the life that she had been wanting all her life, the freedom to do whatever she wanted to do.

- By 1969 there were people who began gathering together in Pittsburgh and building up some resources because they wanted to actually make film.

- I mean, this was a curious grassroots movement of people, it wasn't even clear whether they wanted to make documentary films or experimental films, but they wanted to make their own movies.

And they had gathered around Sally.

These young people formed the core of what became Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

- All I can remember is boy, hippies, all of them, and they wore the hippie outfits, but they were all happy.

- There was something about experimental filmmakers that presented them as outsiders, they were the other.

And I think there was something about that difference, that otherness that was of interest to Sally.

I think she, for whatever reason, had a kind of empathy or sympathy with that otherness, and wanted to support that.

(film reel flapping) (gentle guitar music) - She had been involved in the women's committee at the Carnegie Museum of Art for a period of years and had informally organized screening events there, early screenings of Andy Warhol films, Claes Oldenburg films, Ray and Charles Eames, there was a lot of positive success around the screenings that she did.

The women that were involved in this committee wanted to see more of this.

(static sound) - We'll look at this collection of films tonight, and maybe we can discuss, not maybe, but let us discuss afterwards what we've seen and what your feelings are about these films.

(static sound) - She could speak passionately, intelligently, fervently, for the form of film art, and she could bring people into a comfortable relationship to something they didn't understand, but she might make them want to know more.

(dramatic band music) - Before writing the proposal for a museum film program, she had spent one year visiting New York City and doing basically field research.

New York City had this impressive film department at the Museum of Modern Art, and also had this Cineprobe series where avant-garde filmmakers would come and present work to audiences.

She had also met Jonas Mekas, he was about to open Anthology Film Archives, which would become a very important film museum run by avant-garde artists in New York City.

He basically took her by the hand to different community spaces, he introduced her to artists like Stan Brakhage, so that she was immersed in the avant-garde world that existed at that time.

- She got excited by seeing some of Brakhage films, and she wanted to share them with others.

- Experimental film just exploded for her, and she became absolutely fascinated with this, and decided that she needed to have a museum program, so that those people and film in general could be represented within the context of the visual arts.

During this period, film was already coming in but slowly into the art gallery and museum.

Film installation was only just beginning.

- Through her parents' connections at Carnegie Museum, with Leon Arkus, who was the head of the museum at that time, she proposed a film program to him.

- [Sally] When I was working at the museum, the director came through.

And I said, we should start a film department here.

This is the 20th century art form, we should have this, we should be doing this.

And he said, oh, go ahead and start it if you want.

Good evening.

It's a great pleasure to welcome you back to the lecture hall, the film series.

We have Stan Brakhage back again, to introduce and discuss with you three films that the museum has just bought.

And I think major work certainly, "Dog Star Man" if any of you have seen it before, it's owned by many of the best film collections, film archives throughout the world, and now we have it too.

Many of you may not have seen this kind of film, it's not a movie in the Hollywood sense, or the narrative sequential sense, if you could just hang free on it and not expect meaning to come out in order or in sequence, much the way you would listen to a piece of music just let it happen, let it go through your eyes as it were and the meaning emerge when it's ready.

They're difficult films, Stan's style is, I would say far out, farthest out possibly.

They're extremely rich, and will repay you many times as you view them again and again.

He's here again, I introduce him to you, Stan Brakhage.

(congregants applauding) (indistinct chatter) - [Stan] I'm very, very happy to be back in Pittsburgh.

(film reel flapping) (gentle guitar music) - In the early 1970s, Carnegie Institute built a new wing, which was to house the Museum of Art.

And a key part of that, on the ground floor was a theater, for a wonderful intimate theater just under 200 seats.

That yes, was going to serve for talks and so forth, but a large reason for the museum of art theater was so that Sally could show the films that she was showing, it was a space for her.

And she played a real part in designing it.

I mean, she was, I remember when that was being built, she would say, oh, they were gonna do this, and we had to change that, no, that we can't have that, we need whatever it was that she wanted, I can't recall exactly the specifics.

But she wanted to make sure that that theater was exactly what she needed for personal screenings by independent filmmakers.

(gentle guitar music) - Sally brought eight or nine independent artists to the city.

And it was about every month there was a screening of their work at the museum.

But then we would also have workshops that were organized through Pittsburgh Filmmakers, so that the local Pittsburgh filmmakers could work with the filmmakers and the filmmakers could also work on the equipment that the Pittsburgh Filmmakers had in their space.

So they had a Steenbeck and other equipment that sometimes the people didn't have access to, in their own hometowns.

- Money was a huge issue, film costs so much.

I don't think young people today can understand how expensive it was to have 100 feet of film and to process it when you were a film artist.

- She was always trying to think of, how do we make it possible for this very expensive art form, to be supported, and then made accessible to artists.

That was one of her fire in the belly moments, you know, I wanna make it possible for people to have access to material and to exhibition space.

We paid $500 for an independent artist to come, which is about $2,000 in today's time.

- Sally did something that nobody else ever did, and she was able to tap into money in Pittsburgh that was not available elsewhere.

If you got a show in New York, you would get a honoraria from Norma or somebody else, of maybe 200, $250.

But if you did a show in Pittsburgh, Sally was able to pay $500 plus transportation.

(static sound) And that made it very attractive.

The visiting filmmakers would tend to schedule a show in New York, and then Pittsburgh, or Pittsburgh and then New York.

- It's a great pleasure to welcome Ernie Gehr.

(congregants applauding) - She created this image of Pittsburgh as though it were a third coast or third filmmaking capital of the US.

(film reel flapping) (gentle guitar music) - When Sally would invite filmmakers, she would go out of her way to feed them, often with a bunch of guests at her house, she would often put them up, they would stay at her house, it was a way for her to learn more about them.

- She wanted to really make filmmakers feel at home number one, and number two, that they had the resources to do anything, that anything was possible.

- [Sally] Brakhage was one of the first people I had, and Frampton also, but when they both got there, they asked if by any chance I could get them permission to film somewhere in Pittsburgh.

- Brakhage was sensitive, he would take offense or he would be frightened by certain encounters.

But Sally opened the doors, so that he could go into places he'd never gone to before.

- "The Pittsburgh Trilogy" by Stan Brakhage, is a very interesting group of films, it's three films, they're each about half an hour long, and each about a Pittsburgh institution.

One about a hospital.

One about the police.

And one about the morgue.

- His "Pittsburgh Trilogy" is probably one of the most important documentary projects ever made.

That only would have been possible because Sally Dixon, and a local news photographer helped him get access to facilities to film.

We wouldn't have this masterpiece without the work that she did behind the scenes.

- She could get a camera man into the autopsy room for God's sake, how could you do that?

(laughs) The thing that always struck me about her was she was just like Mary Poppins.

She was magical, and always of service.

She took care of things.

(film reel flapping) (joyful guitar music) - Sally was a presence, she was a presence to be reckoned with, she was amazing.

She was creating this space where something could happen, and we were in it, we were in the middle of it, I was part of it.

So taking a film class we were given, or I managed to purchase 100 feet of film, and I made a little film called "Jakes".

Right next door was an old fashioned pornography shop.

And it always fascinated me, and so I just went in one day with a 16 millimeter camera and started filming the men looking at pornographic magazines and the sex toys and just walking around.

And before I think anybody realized what I was doing, I was out because it was only three minutes worth of film.

And I called it "Jakes" and I still have it (chuckles).

So I took "Jakes" and showed it to Stan and Sally and they both loved the film and gave me a 200 feet of film grant.

So I had 200 feet of film.

And with that film, I made my film which is called, "Self Portrait of a Nude Model Turned Cinematographer".

And that's the film that's currently at the Anthology Film Archives and became part of the Crossroads project and so on and so forth.

But Sally was pivotal on that.

(film reel flapping) (gentle guitar music) - Her relationship with Bruce Baillie was this complete ecstatic relationship to the beauty of his films.

He was almost a Buddhist, I mean, I know he stayed in her house upstairs, but he also had a little, damn, he liked to be in her basement sometimes if there were other visitors there, he was quite happy just to take a sleeping bag and a blanket and go downstairs with a pillow (chuckles).

He was always very comfortable, and she with him.

- [Bruce] I was on the move and I was a filmmaker, beginning at least.

I found myself visiting Pittsburgh, and Sally was the center.

I remember her as a real close friend.

- And when Sally brought Bruce to town, her primary concern was food.

There were particular foods that he did eat or didn't eat, it was a very significant issue for Bruce.

And so Bruce would stay at Sally's house and it was always exactly what he wanted on the stove.

I don't remember what they were, it was healthy, no doubt.

But for each I think of the experimental filmmakers, independent filmmakers that Sally would bring in, she had a different kind of involvement, engagement with them on a person to person level.

(film reel flapping) Roger Jacoby was a very interesting Pittsburgh filmmaker.

His interest was in developing his own film, and he did that in his bathtub.

I mean, we're not talking some fancy development, we're talking again, very crude kitchen-like developing process.

And often the image would deteriorate, would be destroyed or manipulated, and Roger liked that, he liked the evocativeness that he could get by developing his own image.

Roger made a film called "Dream Sphinx Opera".

Sally was a key figure in that, a kind of mythic presence floating through that.

Another figure that appears in that film is Ondine, (muffled speaking) Olivo who's one of the Warhol superstars, and Ondine and Roger Jacoby were an item, they lived together in Pittsburgh actually on Wallace Street not far from Sally's place.

The evenings at Roger and Ondine's would be wonderful because Ondine was a great cook, he loved to cook, he was Italian, and it was just, it was a great meal.

And all that stuff kept pouring out of the kitchen, and I kept thinking, this is the same place where Roger was developing films, and it was Roger's films were sort of pouring out of the bathroom, and out of his bathtub, in the same way that Ondine's food was pouring out of the kitchen, and it was a great kind of environment to be in, it was like all of the stuff that one could enjoy, food and film and so forth.

- Roger was another force of nature and Sally could really cope with him.

He was very tempestuous and passionate and mildly crazy at times in a wildly wonderful way.

I became very close with him and Ondine, and lived with them on the last couple of months in Pittsburgh, I would spend a lot of time in the bathtub room where the film was being developed.

And Sally encouraged Ondine and Roger to just try to use that creative energy of their life together to make this magic.

- She really fostered Roger's career, I don't think that he would have blossomed as a filmmaker, I'm not even sure that he would have been a filmmaker, without Sally's support and encouragement.

(film reel flapping) (gentle guitar music) - James was on the anthology film group that chose the canon of experimental films, Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney.

Sally used to talk about him as one of the three Bs, her favorites, Baillie, Broughton and Brakhage.

And I think he was already, of course very much in touch with Stan Brakhage, but I think Sally got him more interested in other experimental filmmakers.

And he started experimenting even more with his films.

James had already made "The Bed" and he had already made films with nudity, which Sally loved.

And she loved James's love of the body.

Sally asked James to come and make a film.

And he was a little bit surprised that it was hard to find people who were willing to take their clothes off in Pittsburgh compared to San Francisco where people were wanting to take their clothes off.

After they finally found enough people who were willing to be in the film, they would sit at coffee in her kitchen and read the poem on which the film was based, and talk about how they might represent some of these lines, like share your shoreline with my peninsula.

And my understanding is that then, they went out into the dining room, and they actually shot some of the bodies laid out on her dining room table.

So the film "Erogeny" was made, it was really a collaboration between James Broughton and Sally.

I think they both loved film and used the film as a way of opening up.

- [James] Why is cinema so much the art of our time?

That's interesting to me.

- [Sally] Has it to do with this now, that you're talking about (muffled speaking).

- [James] The fluidity of the now.

- [Sally] And the capturing the camera enables you to get it at the moment, whereas if you feel you're in touch with that moment than if you've gotta go home and chisel on a piece of granite for months, to realize it, to make it visible, your vision.

How long can you sustain that actual living moment?

(gentle guitar music) - James wrote journals almost every day from age 13 until he died.

He does write about how that particular trip to Pittsburgh, it opened him up.

I think it was when he shot "Erogeny" that he had just first connected with Joel.

And Joel talks about how James had gone to Pittsburgh to make "Erogeny" and when he came back, I think Sally helped facilitate James's being able to actually become true to himself, to leave his wife and kids and to come out.

(film reel flapping) (gentle guitar music) - She was tending a garden of brilliant people.

Each one of them a different flower.

I don't wanna be corny, but that image comes to mind because that's the way she would approach Stan Brakhage, and Ken Jacobs or Bruce Baillie, is like this incredible plant, that was just producing these different kinds of flowers.

And she would do what she could to help them bloom.

- Look at my lovely garden.

Oh, exquisite, exquisite.

Yeah, yep, oh, it's coming down, damn right (laughs).

- There was something of a mother in Sally.

And I think that Sally was a mother to Pittsburgh filmmakers.

I think that she was in a sense too a kind of mother to some of the experimental filmmakers.

Maybe they didn't see it that way, but I think that she somehow had this urgency to be supportive, be protective, be encouraging, in one, what might describe as a motherly instinct.

(gentle guitar music) - The great mark of Sally functioning out of the museum was if you were a young filmmaker, and a nobody, she never cared what your background was, or if you were important or a star.

If you had work that you loved, and you wanted to show her, she always just said, come in, let's look at it right now.

That was one of our daily jobs was ushering someone into Sally so that she could see work.

And then she'd say, oh, Jean, come into the screening room (chuckles) you've got to see this.

And it would just be, office work would stop and we would just close the screening door.

And we'd just be in there with some young filmmaker, or somebody that had come to town, who just wanted to see what Sally thought.

So she had this unerring eye, and then this boundless generosity of spirit.

- You know, you can't do that at the Whitney or at the MoMA, you can't go into the head curator's office and say, hey, I made a film on my iPhone, do you wanna see it?

But she was willing to see anything.

- I remember at one point, Yoko Ono and John Lennon wanted to bring their stuff to Pittsburgh.

And I'm like all over that, I'm just, oh, really mother?

Said you gotta, oh, you gotta get them.

And she said, well, she's gonna send Yoko is gonna send me her stuff, and then we'll take a look at it, and I'm like, what do you mean you're gonna take a look at it?

I said, they can stay here, they can have my room.

You know, they don't even, and of course then Yoko sent her the work, and she said, you know what, I'm not gonna do this, because her stuff's just not that good.

At that point it didn't cut the mustard.

She just didn't wanna show it because of who they were, but she was trying to show quality.

(film reel flapping) (gentle guitar music) - One of the things that Sally had initiated as a part of the film program, that was really important, I think, on a national level, was something that she called the film and video makers travel sheet.

- The travel sheet was kind of a phone book that showed everybody in the art world, these are all the people you can contact.

These are all the institutions you could find work at.

So you knew what was coming up, you knew, oh, Hollis Frampton is coming to New York, well, let's have him come to Millennium Film Workshop, or three or four other places within this particular region.

I mean, this is in an era before the internet, it's really hard to find out what people are doing.

So she was trying to create a kind of networking tool that facilitated the creation of more connections.

- The travel sheets that Sally Dixon created at the Carnegie were absolutely central, in allowing filmmakers to build a larger network of gigs, of exhibition sites, of distribution, right?

It was the only solid network that they really had besides letter writing.

They depended on those to help them make a living, and to help them meet other curators, other filmmakers, to expose new communities and audiences to their work.

- The travel sheet was published monthly from September of 1973, so through early 1987.

Even just looking across the growth of the travel sheet with the first entry that has, I think around 30 different individuals listed and by the time we get to the travel sheet in February of 1977, there are over 200 different people represented in that single travel sheet.

One of the really powerful things looking at this resource is that you start to realize, that Sally Dixon's reach went beyond the work that she was able to do at the Carnegie and across the nation to reach out to anyone who wanted to create the cinema and gave them a tool for helping to elevate their work and find an audience for their work.

(film reel flapping) (gentle guitar music) - We just became absolute friends the way women can.

First of all, she manages to bring me out for showing "Fuses".

When I stayed with Sally, being with Sally, was just such a pleasure.

She was so warm and loving and open and smart.

It was wonderful, it was so exciting.

In those days, it was early '60s, I started filming the first footage of "Fuses", and I had to have a letter from a psychiatrist, going with 800 foot of raw material, because the FBI was looking for porno and porno was anything such as "Fuses" was because there was no precedent.

The culture is, its phobic and suppressive of nature and the aesthetic and the sacred.

- When "Fuses" was screened, the projectionist felt that he was soiled, that he had seen something that he would define as pornography, and that it was gonna be shown.

So Sally had to bring on somebody else to project the films.

This was astounding.

- Before Sally, you had to go to this wall of men.

They had a cultural authority over which films were really to be valued.

And mine were always bypassed so that at some point I asked Stan why he could never include them in anything that was experimental.

And he said, well, they're not really films.

So Sally created this visionary visual intercession of what could be considered seriously.

- Sally understanding the importance of that film as a object of art, and the importance Carolee as a figure in the American art movement in general, not just film, wanted to purchase "Fuses" which she did with Women's Committee money.

Sally then at some point felt an obligation to show the women's committee what she had purchased with their money, and showed them the film "Fuses".

And the response to that was probably not as positive and enthusiastic as Sally might have expected.

- Sally somewhere in there, inadvertently discovered the other curators were all male in the museum, were getting several $1,000 more than she was getting for salary.

But I'm not sure the museum itself recognized what a mark she was making in the art world.

- Sally was a national figure by 1974.

She was on the media arts panel at the National Endowment for the Arts.

None of the other curators at Carnegie Institute had the kind of reputation that she had, she was national, and nobody else was, and she was being underpaid significantly.

She felt more than the money that she was being slighted as a woman.

- So Sally had this beauty and grace, self-determination, and of course, it was appreciated but constrain.

That's what strong creative women had to do was dance around the edges that had been put up to give us modest entrance into the culture, but we were not ever to assume that we could really have authority or change it.

- [Narrator] As some of you may know, I've resigned from my job with the film section at the Museum of Art and have been succeeded by Bill Judson.

- [Bill] Many people have expressed their sorrow that you're leaving.

- [Sally] Well, I have loved the job, I have loved every minute of it for the most part, there's been a lot of hard work, but it's some of the richest years of my life.

(film reel flapping) - And then in 1975 she moved to Colorado.

(gentle band music) - In leaving Pittsburgh, she left behind her parents and that kind of world, she left behind the museum, and she was going toward the adventure, I mean imagine.

But she kept all her connections in Washington and in New York and she never left experimental film.

And when she arrived in Colorado, she was connected to everybody, and her focus was on the man up the mountains Stan Brakhage.

- Sally lived up in her little cabin up there, right near Stan Brakhage.

She was funny, living away up in the mountains all by herself.

- She met her husband Ricardo through the University of Colorado.

He submitted a film that Sally was a judge, but she didn't care for the film, that didn't matter to him or her, they both appreciated each other for who they were.

- She was just this very interesting, attractive woman, she is undoubtedly a person that strikes the passerby because physically she radiated her spirit.

So it was inevitable that you would be drawn to her, I think everybody was and is, I just was lucky that she found me interesting.

(gentle band music) The Telluride Film Festival was coming up, and so I suggested to Sally boldly, "Do you wanna go to Telluride?"

And she boldly said yes.

So we drove in this big red station wagon that I had.

We slept in the back, and we began our love affair there.

(bass guitar music) I don't think I've ever met somebody else who was so positive, so present.

At one point, it became obvious that I would become an illegal alien, because I had a student visa.

And that if we wanted to stay together, I had to be married to Sally.

And so we approached our getting married, as if it wasn't a burden or a drama or some great sacrifice.

We got married at the courthouse, and we had our reception at Virgil Grillo's house, who was the head of the film department we met in.

For me, our time in Denver, our honeymoon was probably the happiest time of my life.

I think what bound us together was a sort of a yes attitude.

I mean, if anybody that you've interviewed will say something about Sally, that it comes to the point of Sally is that she, her attitude to life is yes, yes.

Yes to whenever, you know, just the general sense of yes.

(dramatic band music) (film reel flapping) She was offered a job at Film in the Cities, and she accepted.

(rhythmic band music) - I have to say I was completely skeptical, and it felt, oh, no, we're never gonna get Sally Dixon, we can't get her.

And sure enough, she came.

- The program that was here at the Walker and at Film in the Cities, and that I benefited from being the director of education, was that she would invite Stan Brakhage or Bruce Baillie or Yvonne Rainer or the many people too who came, and they would teach a master class over at Film in the Cities.

And then they would come here to the Walker, in fact, the very room we're sitting in right now, this is where they came, and they would be on stage and they would talk about their films.

Just an enormous group of people that all came because of Sally's invitation.

She was the one who could reach out to them, and they would of course, say yes.

So it was very exciting.

She was very successful at convincing funders to support what we were doing.

We were able to get funding from the National Endowment for the Arts to build the film collection at Film in the Cities, which has now become part of the Walker collection.

And when looking at the list of films that we brought in, they were the films that I'm sure Sally recommended because they were by Kenneth Anger and Bruce Baillie and Robert Breyer and Yvonne Rainer.

Sally, who also had a collection of films herself, things that she had been given as gifts or things that she had at her home, when she contacted us about having these donated to the Walker film collection, we were very happy to work with her and do that.

And this I'll show you just because we found it just outside it was right here, it was something that Roger Jacoby had given a film to Sally and Ricardo.

And this is part of what came in over in our collection.

This was the film that he wrote to them, and gave to them.

(film reel flapping) (dramatic band music) - She left Film in the Cities and became a grants coordinator for the Bush Foundation.

- Sally ran the Bush Artist Fellowship program, which gave 10 or 15 fellowships a year substantial amount of money 20, $30,000.

And this was the most prestigious fellowship you could get.

- It was life changing for every artist who got a Bush Foundation fellowship.

And the way Sally directed it was extraordinary, because, for example, she made clear to the artists who had received fellowships that they could do whatever they wanted, and the freedom and the sense of responsibility that that gave artists was a life changing experience, because what that meant was, that you could follow your heart, you could really do the best possible work that you could think up.

- Sally was the perfect person to lead the Bush Foundation's Artist Fellowship program, because all of her skills that she had honed through all the filmmaking, at Pittsburgh and Film in the Cities came to bear, because she was bringing together artists themselves to make a judgment on who deserved support and it was all about supporting the artist, right?

- She really built so many relationships within the community, just because of her generosity and the way that she was open to doing things and really believed in art and its voice and what it did.

And that was really amazing.

- Her work at the Bush Foundation has touched and helped and given affirmation to so many artists, and kept their vision alive and going.

Without the grants that she gave and administered, I think a lot of artists may have given up and abandoned their careers.

- I remember when she retired there was a farewell celebration here at the Walker Art Center for her and just having her surrounded by all of these artists that she had supported, and again, the love they had for her, and I'm just trying, they really did circle around her and one of the composer musicians sang and I think we all somehow got involved (laughs) in celebrating her.

(film reel flapping) (birds chirping) (gentle guitar music) (film reel flapping) - [Emmy] Eight or nine years ago, Sally started having some word finding problems.

And then slowly things started changing a little bit more, and was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, and then Alzheimer's.

She never directly told me why she chose film, but I think film chose her.

- When you see her today, you'll realize that I don't think there's anyone who has this disease, who projects the awareness that she projects that she knows she has it, she knows it's horrible, she knows it can be a jailer to so many people, but she again, she refuses to be jailed by it.

(muffled speaking) - [Man] Stuff out of the way.

- For me today was a little overwhelming.

Just because I haven't seen her in so long, I'm envious of my brother Alexander, of his being able to be close but also it's a very tough job what he's been doing.

It's just good to see her.

(muffled speaking) - [Man] Ever been used.

- Sally is a very loving person and has enhanced my family life, because I'm married to her son, and you have always been so kind and have always been supportive of me.

- God.

- Sally's day.

Yay.

Bye everybody.

Sally has influenced so many artists and she's been kind of behind the scenes pulling so many aspects together to support other people's careers.

And ever since I've known her, I wondered why her story hasn't been told.

(gentle guitar music) (film reel flapping) - Sally Dixon is a significant figure in the experimental film, scene or history, because she forged these really close relationships with so many filmmakers and really helped guide them and influence them, and I think she really encouraged them.

- All too often, we focus on the works themselves, but it truly is those interpersonal networks that made the community that allowed the avant-garde and independent cinema to flourish.

And bring challenging cinema to audiences that wouldn't otherwise have consumed it.

- Sally Dixon was interesting because she was not an academic trained in film theory or film history, but she showed that that didn't really matter, that being a curator was actually about people.

Sally was open minded, and that's actually the most important thing about presenting art or supporting an art community is to be sympathetic and relate to people who are different from you.

- Sally had an enormous curiosity that lit up a room.

And I think, while we all know she was loving and gracious and receiving and receptive, I think it was this electric curiosity that you could see it spark, if she heard an idea or saw an image, her eyes would just pop, and she would just want to have you see it, she would pull you in and it was, come see this, you won't believe this.

- I wish that more people could find value in creating a travel sheet or calling up a filmmaker and offering the money to show a screening or previewing work and then showing it to an audience.

There's millions of invisible tasks that go into sustaining an art world, and that she did like all of that by herself.

- She was certainly out on a limb, cutting new trails for most of her career in her life, and God blessed her for it.

(rhythmic band music) - Sally contributed so much to the lives of, not just the filmmakers and the artists that she interacted with, but to anybody that crossed her path.

As her son I always grew up just accepting my relationship with her on a sort of instinctual, everyday living basis.

I wasn't always able to see and appreciate what it was that she did for other people, what she did for me and what she's done for the world.

- I think being a woman who has been so powerful and strong, we all need role models like that.

- Yes.

Yes.

(film real flipping) (air whooshing) (explosion sound) (air whooshing) (gentle band music) Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh She feeds them Loves them Sees them Eagle-eyed embraces She brings them home Feathers the nest Nurtures what's best Helps them spread their wings and fly Spread their wings and fly Sweet loving blackbird Falling backward Turn around and fly Turn around and fly Feeds them Needs them Loves them Freedom Spread their wings and fly Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Sweet loving blackbird Falling backward Spread their wings and fly Spread their wings and Spread their wings and fly Feeds them Loves them Sees them Freedom Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Sweet loving Ooh oh blackbird Spread your wings and fly Nurtures them Opens up her heart to see Eagle-eyed embraces Unfamiliar places Ooh Ooh Spread their wings and fly Spread their wings and fly Spread their wings and fly Spread their wings and fly