Abbott Meader

Directing

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Abbott Meader is an American painter, filmmaker and retired Professor of art. Born In the Brooklyn area of New York City, his roots and many generations of ancestors are to be found in the northern, rural state of Maine, where he and his wife Nancy have lived since the 1960s. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Dartmouth College, and while in graduate school at the University of Colorado he became a friend of noted filmmaker Stan Brakhage, who encouraged him to explore film as well as painting and drawing. Meader’s early films reveal the influence of Brakhage, while clearly moving toward a distinctive personal vision. His work has been shown frequently in film festivals – in Brussels, Rome, Rapallo, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Boston, and at many schools and colleges over the years. From the early 1960s into the 1990s he produced a large body of personal film work while continuing to paint, teach, and help raise a family along with his wife Nancy, who had become a noted potter. Around the year 2000 it seemed to him that 16 mm was being essentially eliminated as he saw film stocks and labs disappear and costs go up substantially, and he reached an impasse. Always active as a painter as well as a filmmaker, the tangible “thingness” of film, with its individual frame as an actual surface to work on by hand, to be carefully picked up and held to the light, then physically cut and spliced — these physical characteristics had been essential. He therefore reluctantly decided to leave the world of personal film making and return primarily to painting. He nevertheless continued to collaborate with other filmmakers on a variety of projects as he had done over many years. His existing body of 16mm film work numbers well over fifty titles, and now, with the help of Bruce Williams, his friend and fellow filmmaker, Meader’s films are getting new life in a pristine digital form that makes them accessible to an expanded audience.

Film	Credit
Trout Fly Deep Trout Too2000 · Director	Director
Prologue to Echo Me1985 · Director	Director
Winter Fence1984 · Director	Director
Spem in Alium1982 · Director	Director
Summerfall Black Berries1982 · Director	Director
DDeep Trout1981 · Director	Director
Winter Li1981 · Director	Director
South Slope: What Love Tells Me1980 · Director	Director
American Odyssey1979 · Director	Director
Snake Dance Teacher Dance1978 · Director	Director
Wind in the Web1978 · Director	Director
In the Mountains1977 · Director	Director
West By North1977 · Director	Director
FFlipping Out1976 · Director	Director
Isolation1974 · Director	Director
Shadows from the Western Wall1974 · Director	Director
Lovetape Film1973 · Director	Director
Racetrack1972 · Director	Director
Nogarok1972 · Director	Director
Catwalk1972 · Director	Director
Tutto, tutto nello stesso istante1969 · Director	Director
Destroying Angel1969 · Director	Director
Moments Ago1969 · Director	Director
Shiva Ree1968 · Director	Director
Gallery1968 · Director	Director
WWilderness1967 · Director	Director
For Life, Against the War1967 · Director	Director
VVigil1966 · Director	Director
DDeparture1966 · Director	Director
Summer Storm Passage1965 · Director	Director
Criss Cross1965 · Director	Director
The Elms1964 · Director	Director
AAn Interior1964 · Director	Director
BBone1963 · Director	Director
AA Looking for Summer1963 · Director	Director