Annette Michelson died sometime in the past few days at the age of 96. I met her when we brought her here for the International Experimental Film Congress in 1989, an event where everyone thought she would tear us (the organizers) and the other speakers apart. Instead, she was quite charming, and enjoyed, I think, seeing so many of her ex-students there, from Bart Testa to Mike Zryd, Paul Arthur (RIP), et al. 

Michelson was a brilliant, erudite, insightful, but extremely readable art and film scholar and critic. She was one of the co-founders of October, with Rosalind Krauss. It was one of the few scholarly journals that shaped what I read, what I watched, and how I thought about philosophy, theory, politics, art, and film. I hung in there for about 100 issues, and Michelson was one of they reasons why. 

Michelson was also a prolific writer for Artforum, and many other publications. Her 1973 special issue of Artforum Eisenstein/Brakhage was a milestone. 

Michelson established the prestigious NYU film department with Jay Leyda and, through her rigour, her particular interest in phenomenology and post-structuralism (esp. Foucault, Barthes, Kristeva, et al), her deep interest in the avant-garde across the spectrum (eg, “the two Stanleys - Kubrick and Brakhage”), she helped shape a generation of film scholars and critics. 

She was also a terror, of course. We just got lucky at the Congress. 

Michelson inspired my passion for and understanding of Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov, not to mention Michael Snow. Her essays “Toward Snow” and “About Snow” are surpassed only by Bruce Elder and probably P. Adams Sitney’s interpretations of Snow’s work.

Michelson helped inspire my love Hollis Frampton, not to mention Maya Deren and Joseph Cornell. She was also one of Michael Snow’s superstar performance artists in Rameau’s Nephew by Diderot (thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen.

R.I.P.