biography

Biography by way of Ed Halter's Interview with MM Serra

Filmmaker, writer, teacher, curator, director of the Film-Makers’ Co-op and all around dyanmo, MM Serra has been central to the East Village experimental film scene for nearly a decade and a half. Her raven-black Betty Page hairdo, starlet sunglasses, sexpot leather pants and outrageous laughter make her one of downtown’s most unforgettable personalities—as she often notes, the “MM” stands for Mary Magdalene. Visit her today at the Co-op (the world’s oldest distributor of experimental cinema, founded downtown in 1962) and you’ll easily get sucked into her unflagging whirl of energy. Her mind seems to have collected more information than the New York Public Library: In five minutes she’ll download everything onto you from the history of women filmmakers to feminist theories of pornography to the latest gossip about avant-garde filmmakers, plus turn you on to some underground movies you’ve never seen, but should have. Serra has lived on Ludlow Street since the 80s; I moved to the East Village in 1994. Our first interaction was on the phone, when I was doing research as a grad student on Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures. She talked my ear off with all the insider dirt. When I began programming the New York Underground Film Festival in 1996, she curated a show for us called “MM Serra’s Electric Sex Machine.” One of my favorite memories from that year was seeing two rather stunned representatives from one of our corporate sponsors exit the theater after Serra screened Henry Hills’ “Igneous Ejaculation,” which features a glorious spurt of female ejaculate as its finale. Serra and I have been pals ever since. For this interview, we met on a sunny weekend afternoon in May 2003, next door to her apartment, in the pleasant minature garden behind Valerie’s hair salon, to talk about experimental movies, the East Village, and her. She filled me in on shows she curated in the 80s and early 90s, when the East Village saw its last truly gritty underground moment. We laughed, we drank, we talked about sex and politics a lot. But don’t worry—the following interview has been edited to keep all your reputations intact.

Biography by way of Ed Halter's Interview with MM Serra

Filmmaker, writer, teacher, curator, director of the Film-Makers’ Co-op and all around dyanmo, MM Serra has been central to the East Village experimental film scene for nearly a decade and a half. Her raven-black Betty Page hairdo, starlet sunglasses, sexpot leather pants and outrageous laughter make her one of downtown’s most unforgettable personalities—as she often notes, the “MM” stands for Mary Magdalene. Visit her today at the Co-op (the world’s oldest distributor of experimental cinema, founded downtown in 1962) and you’ll easily get sucked into her unflagging whirl of energy. Her mind seems to have collected more information than the New York Public Library: In five minutes she’ll download everything onto you from the history of women filmmakers to feminist theories of pornography to the latest gossip about avant-garde filmmakers, plus turn you on to some underground movies you’ve never seen, but should have.

Serra has lived on Ludlow Street since the 80s; I moved to the East Village in 1994. Our first interaction was on the phone, when I was doing research as a grad student on Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures. She talked my ear off with all the insider dirt. When I began programming the New York Underground Film Festival in 1996, she curated a show for us called “MM Serra’s Electric Sex Machine.” One of my favorite memories from that year was seeing two rather stunned representatives from one of our corporate sponsors exit the theater after Serra screened Henry Hills’ “Igneous Ejaculation,” which features a glorious spurt of female ejaculate as its finale. Serra and I have been pals ever since.

For this interview, we met on a sunny weekend afternoon in May 2003, next door to her apartment, in the pleasant minature garden behind Valerie’s hair salon, to talk about experimental movies, the East Village, and her. She filled me in on shows she curated in the 80s and early 90s, when the East Village saw its last truly gritty underground moment. We laughed, we drank, we talked about sex and politics a lot. But don’t worry—the following interview has been edited to keep all your reputations intact.