Enjoy free popcorn with an acclaimed filmmaker

Experimental nonfiction filmmaker Greta Snider is being honored with a retrospective at No Name Cinema in Santa Fe on Friday, Sept. 26.

The nonprofit microcinema, which operates out of an intimate, 50-seat warehouse space similar to a blackbox theater, has been hosting avant-garde film screenings since 2021. All events are donation-based, and free popcorn is provided.

The retrospective will consist of nine short films Snider made over the past 36 years. The San Francisco-based filmmaker will be in attendance for a live post-screening Q&A.

“I’m super excited,” Snider said. “No Name Cinema is a fantastic microcinema. It’s a wonderful venue and an important community resource.”

Snider said she especially appreciates how open and accessible No Name is, which helps new audiences discover films they might not otherwise be exposed to.

“People know they can go there and see something interesting at least once a week, whether it’s something they’re familiar with or not. And that’s amazing,” she said. “It’s something that’s always there that you can check out, so people are more likely to learn something they would not have known that they were interested in or intrigued by.”

No Name will be screening the first film Snider made, “Hard Core Home Movie” from 1989. This short film documents a hardcore punk concert where Bad Brains and other bands are playing. But rather than focusing on the musicians, Snider turns her attention to the audience.

“I had no idea what I was doing whatsoever,” Snider said. “And the interviews were just people on the street. Me and a couple friends stood outside, in front of a club, and asked people, ‘What do you like about punk rock?’ — including asking people who were just walking by, who were completely unrelated (to the scene). So, you get a couple of other views in there, too, which are pretty funny.”

“Hard Core Home Movie” is one of Snider’s more traditional films. For others, she uses unconventional processes, such as chopping up found footage or painting directly on film negatives.

“A lot of my films are made out of old films. So, in that case, I’m handling the celluloid material and cutting it with a kind of modified scissors and taping it together. It is all very physical,” Snider said. “The physicality of filmmaking is something that is really important to me. It’s something I really like.”

Storytelling is important to Snider, too, although her films rarely follow conventional storylines.

“One of the things I’m not interested in doing is setting out a scenario, introducing a conflict, and then resolving that conflict at the end of the movie, and then everybody goes home,” she said. “With artwork that I enjoy and that I think about later and that I remember, it’s usually where I feel like I’m invited into a space or an idea, and I can hear or see what the filmmaker or the artist has put together, but I’m also free to bring my own experience to it, as well. So, I try to do that in my work, too.”

Snider wants her audiences to feel free to drift among their own thoughts and feelings, rather than focusing solely on what she’s trying to say.

“Like, you can chill, and you’ll hear an entertaining story or see something that’s visually interesting, for sure,” she said. “But there’s also, I hope, space for you to think about (things like), ‘Oh, do I know a person like this?’ Or, ‘What do I think about this idea? What landscape do I remember that remind me of this?’ So, there’s a space for people to also enjoy their own thoughts and interests while watching the movies.”

There’s no right or wrong way to watch the films, according to Snider. And some people, especially fellow filmmakers, enjoy watching her films to try to figure out how she made them.

“Some parts of my audience are interested in the process. People will want to know, ‘Oh, how’d you do that? Could I do that?’ That’s interesting, that sort of thing,” Snider said. “It’s the same way that cooks and chefs, when they go to a restaurant, they are eating the food, but also thinking, ‘Oh, would I do that?’ So, for people who also like to make things or see how things are made, I think my films might possibly make space for that kind of engagement, as well.”

Snider’s “A Small Place” (2019) explores the experience of solitary confinement. She said it was based, in part, on the book “Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement” (2017), which is an anthology of first-person accounts by currently or formerly incarcerated individuals.

Visually, “A Small Place,” begins very abstractly. As it goes on, though, scraps of text and found-footage images emerge, and the subject becomes clear.

“That movie was very emotional, sort of cathartic to put together for me,” Snider said.

The experiences of solitary confinement were “so gutting,” she said, that it was hard for her to even discuss the film when she was first screening it at festivals.

“At the end of the screening, when you go up to the front and people ask you questions, I would burst into tears. It was so uncool,” Snider said. “But it was so emotional and really hard to talk about. But I think that’s why I made the film.”

Audiences at the No Name retrospective will have the chance to watch these and seven other rarely-screened short films from the award-winning filmmaker’s wide-ranging career.

Free popcorn with an acclaimed filmmaker