Cinema Studies Talk Series
Fall 2025
October 31st at 4pm in LH 6
"Allegiances of Difference in Frank Moore鈥檚 Misfit Cinema" a talk by Olga Tchepikova-Treon
Talk Abstract: Frank Moore proudly refers to himself as a misfit artist. Misfits, he insists, are essential in today鈥檚 culture. Their calling is to push back the limits of society in the interest of protecting free expression. While he acknowledges that there are many ways to be a misfit artist, Moore considers himself lucky to have been born with cerebral palsy. Being 鈥渟pastic,鈥 he claims, provides him with certain 鈥渢echniques of freedom鈥 that advance his artistic work. In this talk, I will first introduce Moore鈥檚 oeuvre alongside the broader history of disability, performance, and experimental cinema, emphasizing his recurring criticism of the merits and values that are both ascribed onto and expected from the work of disabled artists. Second, I will present Moore鈥檚 short collage film Outrageous Dream (1984) as a concrete example of what playwright, scholar, and artist Ron Whyte calls "allegiances of difference," where disability experience and experimental film practices work in conjunction to explore and subvert the aesthetic and symbolic authority of normalcy, tradition, and convention that permeates dominant film cultures.
Bio: Olga Tchepikova-Treon is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Film and Cinema Studies at NYU鈥檚 Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where she teaches courses on documentary cinema, medicine and film, and misfit cinema histories. Her research examines how disability鈥攁s both lived experience and formal aesthetic鈥攑ermeates alternative, experimental, and underground cinema cultures. Her writing has previously appeared in Wide Screen, The Moving Image, and Gender Forum, and is forthcoming in the collection Disability in Media at Routledge. Strongly invested in film exhibition as a community-building practice, Olga serves as a board member and projectionist at the non-profit screening venue Trylon Cinema in Minneapolis, where she also co-edits the theater鈥檚 community blog Perisphere, soliciting contributions from local writers to support and promote repertory cinema programming. She is also part of the Cult Film Collective, a small group dedicated to rescuing and exhibiting rare 35mm and 16mm film prints, approximately 400 of which are currently living in her basement.