Female Directors In Plain Sight Features Amalie R. Rothschild; Gallery Talk June 8

 Via Guild Cinema Via Guild Cinema

FEMALE DIRECTORS IN PLAIN SIGHT shorts series - PAINTING THE TOWN: THE ILLUSIONISTIC MURALS OF RICHARD HAAS, IT HAPPENS TO US and POSSUM LIVING

Jun 4 thru 6

Tue to Thu 3:30, 8pm

DIRECTOR AMALIE ROTHSCHILD WILL BE IN PERSON FOR THE SCREENINGS PLUS CINEMATOGRAPHER NANCY SCHREIBER WILL BE PRESENT FOR ALL SHOWS EXCEPT THE FINAL THURSDAY 8PM SCREENING!

GALLERY TALK: The Fillmore East and My Unexpected Career in Rock Music PhotographyGALLERY TALK: The Fillmore East and My Unexpected Career in Rock Music Photography

Monroe Gallery of Photography, June 8, 4:30 PM

PAINTING THE TOWN: THE ILLUSIONISTIC MURALS OF RICHARD HAAS - Director Rothschild, along with cinematographer Nancy Schreiber, fashions her own exuberant film mural based on the life and very public work of the celebrated architectural muralist Richard Haas. Since 1974 his “trompe l'oeil” paintings have caused double takes from Munich to Phoenix. His artistry transforms cityscapes in ways that confound and delight. He is an artist with a mission–to make the urban environment visually pleasurable, and therefore more livable and humane.  [Dir. Amalie R. Rothschild - 1990 - 56m approx.]

IT HAPPENS TO US - Made in 1971 by an all-woman crew, women who are rich and poor, young and older, black and white, married and unmarried, tell dramatic stories about why and how they ended their pregnancies when abortion was still illegal.  [Dir. Amalie R. Rothschild - 1972 - 30m approx.]

POSSUM LIVING - Hailed by the New York Times when it premiered at MoMA’s New Directors series, director Schreiber went on to become one of America’s few successful women DPs – most recently with the hit TV series P-Valley– but she was never given another chance to direct a movie.  This short documentary tells the story of Dolly Freed, author of the 1970s cult classic Possum Living.  It shows how this father and daughter pair quit their job and school respectively to live out of their suburban home. As per the book's subtitle, it teaches how to "live well without a job and with (almost) no money."

ABOUT THE DIRECTORS - NANCY SCHREIBER, ASC and AMALIE R. ROTHSCHILD

Nancy Schreiber (ASC) is an award-winning director and  cinematographer based in both New York and Los Angeles. Schreiber has  directed four  dance films including RITES of PASSING and documentaries which included the award winning POSSUM LIVING and an hour long PBS film on women artists called FROM THE HEART.She was the fourth woman ever voted into membership into the prestigious American Society of Cinematographers. Schreiber has compiled over 130 credits, an eclectic list of narrative film and television credits as well as music videos, commercials and documentaries. Schreiber landed on Variety’s 10 cinematographers to watch before taking home the coveted Best Cinematography award at Sundance for the film NOVEMBER, with Courteney Cox. Schreiber has been nominated for an Emmy, an Independent Spirit Award nominations, was awarded the Women In Film Crystal /Kodak award, and in February 2017 was the first women honored with the ASC ( American Society of Cinematographers) President’s award . Schreiber is also a member of the the TV academy , Film Independent, International Documentary Association, Local 600. Women in Film,  and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 

Amalie R. Rothschild is one of the four founders of the successful and progressive 53-year-old distribution cooperative New Day Films. An award-winning filmmaker and photographer she is noted for her documentaries about social issues as revealed through the lives of people in the arts. Ms. Rothschild's keen eye has documented seminal events in history. She was the de facto photographer at the Fillmore East Theater in NYC and on staff at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and the author of Live at the Fillmore East: A Photographic Memoir. Her films include the groundbreaking It Happens to Us made in 1971 with an all-woman crew and the first American film to argue that women should have the right to control their own bodies and end a pregnancy. Other films are Nana Mom and Me, Conversations with Willard van Dyke, and Woo Who? May Wilson. Her film  Painting the Town: The Illusionistic Murals of Richard Haas premiered at Sundance, was shown in the New Directors/New Films sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center and won the Best in Festival Emily Award at the American Film and Video Festival, as well as a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, among other honors. While based professionally in New York City, since 1983 she lives roughly half the year in Italy.

Save the date June 8 for a Gallery Talk With Amalie R. Rothschild

 

Amalie R. Rothschild

Janis and Tina, Madison Square Garden, November 27, 1969

Gallery Talk With Amalie R. Rothschild

Award-winning photographer, filmmaker and author of “Live At The Fillmore East”

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce a gallery talk, free and open to the public, with acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Amalie R. Rothschild on Saturday, June 8. RSVP is essentialRSVP is essential, seating is limited and the talk will begin promptly at 4:30. A special selection of Rothschild’s rock photographs will be on exhibit alongside the current “1964” exhibit. current “1964” exhibit.

An award winning filmmaker and photographer, Rothschild studied with Harry Callahan at RISD and Paul Caponigro at NYU where she made her first film; it was shown at the 1970 New York Film Festival.

She is noted for her documentaries about social issues as revealed through the lives of people in the arts, and for her photographs of seminal rock events, venues and musicians from 1968 to 1974. She was a member of the Joshua Light Show at the Fillmore East Theater in New York producing special effects photography, slides, graphics, films and film loops used during performances and was considered the theater’s unofficial house photographer. She had unlimited access onstage and backstage to all the happenings at the Fillmore East, and was on staff at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.

During that period she photographed most of the major rock music events on the East Coast including the 1969 Newport Festival, Tanglewood 1969 & 1970, The Who’s U.S. premiere of their rock opera Tommy and the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden, Bob Dylan’s 1974 tour, and in England the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival, as well as anti-war/peace demonstrations in the U.S. during the 1960s. Her monograph “Live at the Fillmore East: A Photographic Memoir,” was published in 1999.

In this talk she will discuss how being in the right place at the right time, and the accident of her documentary impulses, led her to record the birth of rock theater and how this created a 20,000 picture archive which has sustained her professionally into her 70s.

Gallery hours are 10 to 5 Daily. Admission is free. For further information, please call: 505.992.0800; E-mail: info@monroegallery.com. Both exhibitions continue through June 23, 2024.

Amalie R. Rothschild, photographer at Fillmore East, recalls brief but legendary run

 Via Fox 5 New York

June 24, 2021

Photographer at Fillmore East recalls brief but legendary run

NEW YORK - Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the last shows performed at the legendary Fillmore East music hall where the likes of The Grateful Dead and the Beach Boys once played. 

The Fillmore is now a bank but its heyday- as a prime music venue- is remembered by resident photographer Amalie Rothschild.

I was a fly on the wall," said Rothschild. "I really didn’t want to be hit on. I wasn’t looking to hook up and my cameras were shields. I was serious. I was an artist. A photographer. I didn’t have the kind of confidence as a young woman yet, but I had the right mentality."

During its’ brief but legendary three-year run from 1968 – 1971, the roughly 2,600 seat Fillmore East in the East Village played host to a who’s who of legendary performers. Elton John, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, The Who, and the Allman Brothers just to name a few. 

Rothschild was, in essence, the venue’s house photographer.

"When the Fillmore opened. The tickets were $3, $4 and $5. And when they closed it was $3.50, $4.50 and $5.50, said Rothschild.

Tickets to similar see bands with similar star power today would cost $500.

"And the first tickets to sell out were the last four rows in the balcony, in the top of the balcony," added Rothschild.

Rothschild, who has enjoyed a long successful career as a photographer and filmmaker, captured some of her most famous photos during a Thanksgiving Day Rolling Stones Show in 1969 at Madison Square Garden. Ike and Tina Turner opened and Janis Joplin made an unexpected cameo onstage.

Amalie R. Rothschild

Janis and Tina, Madison Square Garden, November 27, 1969

"Before they went on, Janis was just standing at the side of the stage with a few friends and right as I pulled the shutter I saw someone walk into the frame and when I developed the film and developed the contact sheet, I went ‘oh" because the person who walked in was Jimi Hendrix," said Rothschild.

Historical in more ways than one. Once bands like the Rolling Stones made their leap to arenas, making more money playing fewer shows to bigger audiences, the days of smaller theaters like the Fillmore were numbered.

In April of 1971, promoter Bill Graham announced he was shutting the venue.

"No one had any clue. It was a terrible shock for the staff to take in. He could’ve kept it going for a few more years but it wouldn’t be the same," said Rothschild.

The final show was a sendoff for the ages. A June 27 1971 all-night show headlined by the house favorites, the Allman Brothers.

"As you know no one wanted it to end.. and one of my favorite pictures of the Beach Boys is that I was able to catch all of them onstage with Bill Graham behind a speaker column watching them onstage.... it went until dawn and we walked out and the sun was out and everybody was crying and we went to Ratner’s for breakfast and it was a real tear-jerker and real difficult.'

Looking Back | The Fillmore East

Amalie R. Rothschild: A huge crowd formed around the Fillmore East in May 1970 when tickets went on sale for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.




June 24, 2011, 4:00 pm


Looking Back
The Fillmore East
By STEPHEN REX BROWN

The push to preserve blocks of the neighborhood through a landmark district has, not surprisingly, led to a lot of conversations about the history of the area. The proposed district covers roughly six blocks, and perhaps no property within the tract has hosted more important figures in American culture than the former Fillmore East building at 105 Second Avenue.

Now, the entrance to the building is an Emigrant Savings Bank, and the 2,600-seat theater has been replaced with an apartment building. But the Fillmore’s three-year existence had a lasting impact culturally; Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker and Miles Davis all recorded well-regarded live albums there. The Who played their rock opera, “Tommy” in its entirety for the first time in the United States in 1969 at the Fillmore East. And the first rock concert to be broadcast on television was taped there in 1970.

But the Fillmore’s impact went beyond the performers onstage. Numerous technological innovations during the theater’s short existence were adopted at concert venues across the country.

“I was blown away by what a creative, experimental theater environment there was at the Fillmore East,” said Amalie R. Rothschild, a photographer who was among the many NYU students who landed dream jobs at the Fillmore when it opened in 1968. “It was a real place to do real things. The students had a live laboratory within which to work.”

Amalie R. Rothschild Jimi Hendrix at the Fillmore East, 1969.

The man behind that environment was Bill Graham, the rock promoter who first made a name for himself with the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. After his success on the West Coast hosting some of rock’s biggest names, Graham returned to his native New York to open another venue.

He purchased the building near Sixth Street, which had previously been a music venue, a Loews cinema, and a Yiddish theater. Within the first year Graham had booked the likes of Janis Joplin, the Who, and Jimi Hendrix.

“It was the top of the heap, guys were just jazzed to be there,” said Jerry Pompili, the house manager of the Fillmore East for most of the time it was open.

With its top-notch sound system, elaborate psychedelic light shows that accompanied performances, noble, theater-like environment and first class treatment of musicians, Graham’s East Village Xanadu attempted to elevate rock music from mere spectacle to art.

“Bill had hit on it. He gave us dignity,” Pete Townshend of the Who said in “Bill Graham Presents,” an oral history of the rock promoter’s life. “We were dignified people. We were artists.”

But that atmosphere that so attracted the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead — and on one occassion John Lennon and Yoko Ono for an impromptu 2 a.m. performance following a show by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention — proved unsustainable in the face of arena rock.

“The business began to transform from coffee houses and theater venues to Madison Square Garden and stadiums,” said Ms. Rothschild, author of “Live at the Fillmore East: A Photographic Memoir.” “Woodstock made it clear that hundreds of thousands of people would come out for this type of music.”

On June 27, 1971 the Fillmore East closed. Of course, there was a heck of a show featuring a lineup that would make the most jaded of music buffs drool: the Allman Brothers, the Beach Boys, Albert King, the J. Geils Band and others.

“The concert went until 6 a.m.,” Rothschild recalled. “Nobody wanted it to end.”

Amalie R. Rothschild The Fillmore East.


More: Slideshow and memories of the Fillmore East