Jerry Tartaglia

Jerry Tartaglia is a filmmaker and writer whose work in Experimental Film and Queer Cinema spans four decades. He studied at Albright College from 1968 to 1972, with the Abstract Expressionist Painter, Harry Koursaros, who introduced him to the work of Jack Smith, Jonas Mekas, and Gregory Markopoulos.

It was in that early environment that he formulated a non-narrative film practice, seeking to realize the other potentialities of Cinema using 16mm film, which was the predominant technology of that time.

He was the first to write about “the gay sensibility in American Avant-Garde film” and his 1977 article in The Millennium Film Journal is regarded a seminal statement on the subject. At a time when the LGBT culture was an underground subculture, it served as an inspiration for the founders of several American LGBT Film Festivals.

His work has been screened around the world and was included in the Century-end retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, “The Art of the 20th Century.”

Since 1990, seven of his films have been premiered at the Berlinale – The Berlin International Film Festival. Manfred Salzgeber, the founding force behind the Panorama Section of the festival, helped bring Tartaglia’s work to European audiences through exhibition and distribution.