I first met Serra when she arrived from Los Angeles, wearing high heels, fabulously sexy black bangs (much like Pabst’s Lulu), and designer coats. I warned her about those heels, saying “you have to be able to run in NYC.” She was a fashionista then and still is. Together, along with Robert Hilferty (brilliant ex-student of mine from NYU and a filmmaker in his own right), we

co-curated Conspiracies over a weekend in May 1988 at Rapp Arts Center, a Catholic church and nun’s residency hall in the East Village (not incidently, where I had edited Mayhem (1987) in a 8’ by 15’ nun’s bedroom, with hardly space for the Steenbeck plus an editing chair.) MM being Catholic, particularly enjoyed screening our outrageous experimental films there. They had a remarkable theater with tragedy-comedy plaster masks centered above the proscenium arch. The line-up of filmmakers on those programs included Todd Haynes, Lewis Klahr, Mary Filippo, Joe Gibbons, Erika Beckmann and other key members of the downtown NYC avantgarde. The poster included Weegee’s famous photograph of a mobbed Coney Island, and our several shows, too, were mobbed and exhilarating. I should add our projectionist was Alex, then, the mixer at Duart Labs, who magnanimously volunteered to work the event. There we were, up in the booth, where things went a bit crazy, as they easily could do screening a long list of short experimental films!

It was successful and fun enough, so that in May 1990, we did another Weekend and then in 1991, Serra and I curated a Valentine’s Day Film Night at WEBO Gallery downtown. Later, Serra single-handedly curated another show, again at Rapp. The most memorable for me from that program was Nick Zedd’s War Is Menstrual Envy, which had Annie Sprinkle cuddling a burn victim. Disturbing and unforgettable. Just what MM loved: sex and shock.

We became fast friends. A bit later, MM was showing her films in S and M dungeons downtown. She had shared her sexual history with me, which involved abuse as a child, abuse that her mother denied. Around then, she showed me her film of her mother, Reel to Real Momma (1982), and the image of her mother staring out at the audience, so harsh, so cold—I felt for her. The person in her family whom she loved the most was her Dad, whom I was privileged to meet. He worked as a coal miner; small and round, he was the opposite of the mom. And he loved gardens. At that point I was a member of a community garden in the East Village, and he would come by and visit, talking about plants and gardening. He was happiest there. Serra has a plot now in the community garden at 6th Street and Ave. B. Digging in the garden is always a pleasure, grounding, quite literally.

There was a time when we tried to do a film together on bisexuality. It didn’t quite work out. But there she was, clicking in her heels across the wood floor at Westbeth where we were shooting. Either later or just before, Peggy Ahwesh and I shot for her film, Soi Meme, on female ejaculation. Quite fun, even if I remained skeptical about what we were seeing.

Serra took on the job at the film coop not long after. She remained always supportive, and always active. In many ways, she brought the Film Coop into the 21st century, getting the films

out to an international audience, travelling with them and curating shows, often of women or lesser known and/or forgotten filmmakers. While working, she studied and graduated with an advanced degree from New York University, remaining dedicated, determined, and loving cinema. She moved ahead no matter the problems, curating shows abroad and establishing an ongoing tradition of exhibition at the Coop itself, continuing to make her own films. She was living on very constrained finances, yet still a fashionista, showing up in wonderful idiosyncratic style, discovering and befriending downtown designers, heralding them just as she did the Coop’s filmmakers. She remained an eccentric beauty, even as she switched from high-heels to baseball shoes. During this time, she was also teaching at the New School, enabling her to influence and bring to experimental cinema a new crop of devotees. She influenced so many people, building community. She worked with Michelle Handleman, Peggy Ahwesh, Jennifer Reeves, Tom Chomont and myself, among others.

Most particularly, I will never forget those incredible Rapp shows and the group of people we brought together in New York: this moment of unity, a fantastic cross-section of filmmakers just as New York was coming out of the 1980s, funky with drugs and a reputation for danger popularized by the film “Escape from New York”. We never ‘escaped’ but stayed, to continue our love affair with the city and cinema, sustaining experimentation, friendship and community.