Abbott Meader

Abbott Meader

Abbott Meader is an American painter, filmmaker and retired Professor of art. Born In the Brooklyn area of New York City, his roots and many generations of ancestors are to be found in the northern, rural state of Maine, where he and his wife Nancy have lived since the 1960s. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Dartmouth College, and while in graduate school at the University of Colorado he became a friend of noted filmmaker Stan Brakhage, who encouraged him to explore film as well as painting and drawing. Meader’s early films reveal the influence of Brakhage, while clearly moving toward a distinctive personal vision. His work has been shown frequently in film festivals – in Brussels, Rome, Rapallo, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Boston, and at many schools and colleges over the years. From the early 1960s into the 1990s he produced a large body of personal film work while continuing to paint, teach, and help raise a family along with his wife Nancy, who had become a noted potter. Around the year 2000 it seemed to him that 16 mm was being essentially eliminated as he saw film stocks and labs disappear and costs go up substantially, and he reached an impasse. Always active as a painter as well as a filmmaker, the tangible “thingness” of film, with its individual frame as an actual surface to work on by hand, to be carefully picked up and held to the light, then physically cut and spliced — these physical characteristics had been essential. He therefore reluctantly decided to leave the world of personal film making and return primarily to painting. He nevertheless continued to collaborate with other filmmakers on a variety of projects as he had done over many years. His existing body of 16mm film work numbers well over fifty titles, and now, with the help of Bruce Williams, his friend and fellow filmmaker, Meader’s films are getting new life in a pristine digital form that makes them accessible to an expanded audience.

  • Title: Abbott Meader
  • Popularity: 2.495
  • Known For: Directing
  • Birthday:
  • Place of Birth:
  • Homepage: https://vimeo.com/channels/abbottmeader
  • Also Known As:
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Abbott Meader Movies

  • 1981
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    Deep Trout

    Deep Trout

    1 1981 HD

    A film by Abbott Meader and Walter Easton 16mm, 43:43 minutes, color, sound, 1981

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  • 1981
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    Deep Trout

    Deep Trout

    1 1981 HD

    A film by Abbott Meader and Walter Easton 16mm, 43:43 minutes, color, sound, 1981

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  • 1981
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    Deep Trout

    Deep Trout

    1 1981 HD

    A film by Abbott Meader and Walter Easton 16mm, 43:43 minutes, color, sound, 1981

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  • 2000
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    Trout Fly Deep Trout Too

    Trout Fly Deep Trout Too

    1 2000 HD

    Film by Abbott Meader and Walter Easton 16mm, 24:44 minutes, color, sound, 2000

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  • 2000
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    Trout Fly Deep Trout Too

    Trout Fly Deep Trout Too

    1 2000 HD

    Film by Abbott Meader and Walter Easton 16mm, 24:44 minutes, color, sound, 2000

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  • 1985
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    Prologue to Echo Me

    Prologue to Echo Me

    1 1985 HD

    Film by Abbott Meader and Walter Easton 16mm, 20:18 minutes, color, sound, 1983-1985

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  • 1985
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    Prologue to Echo Me

    Prologue to Echo Me

    1 1985 HD

    Film by Abbott Meader and Walter Easton 16mm, 20:18 minutes, color, sound, 1983-1985

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  • 1969
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    Tutto, tutto nello stesso istante

    Tutto, tutto nello stesso istante

    1 1969 HD

    16mm collective manifesto by the members of C.C.I.

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  • 1972
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    Racetrack

    Racetrack

    1 1972 HD

    "This dates from 1972 and 73. Frustration and anger in the nation and the world. Nothing new about that. The eternal return, and yet a reality...

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  • 1965
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    Summer Storm Passage

    Summer Storm Passage

    1 1965 HD

    "This film, which dates from 1964, has always satisfied me. I believe the footage was completed before the assassination of Kennedy – an event...

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  • 1964
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    The Elms

    The Elms

    1 1964 HD

    "THE ELMS was my first sound film, in 1964, made after the assassination of JFK. I hoped that the title might bring to mind the American Elm tree,...

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  • 1965
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    Criss Cross

    Criss Cross

    1 1965 HD

    "Back in the 60s my friend Duff Decker and I would swap sound tapes that we made at home from scraps of TV, radio, records, along with our own...

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  • 1969
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    Destroying Angel

    Destroying Angel

    1 1969 HD

    "This short film documents a day in our backyard while also standing in as a mini- creation myth. The film begins with word fragments written on the...

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  • 1972
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    Nogarok

    Nogarok

    1 1972 HD

    "Glimpses into a day in the life of three children. The three are busy with their lives. We see them, but what are they thinking? My camera screws...

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  • 1972
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    Catwalk

    Catwalk

    1 1972 HD

    "The film stars Bone, originally named Basil Catbone, a creature who survived several life threatening events to die at the age of 17. He was one of...

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  • 1968
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    Shiva Ree

    Shiva Ree

    9 1968 HD

    "No English language issues here. The title refers to Siva/Shiva – god of the dance – who dances the world into both destruction and...

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  • 1963
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    A Looking for Summer

    A Looking for Summer

    1 1963 HD

    "Thematically, it echoes the nature of the first film, but is ultimately quite different and more tightly constructed. I try to select some perhaps...

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  • 1967
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    Wilderness

    Wilderness

    1 1967 HD

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  • 1980
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    South Slope: What Love Tells Me

    South Slope: What Love Tells Me

    1 1980 HD

    South Slope: What Love Tells Me is a 16mm film made in 1978-1980 by the artist Abbott Meader. It is a dramatic portrait of a piece of land in Maine...

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  • 1974
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    Isolation

    Isolation

    6 1974 HD

    "I feel that some of the silent pieces might be seen as visual music. Perhaps a bit pretentious to say that, but such pieces as ISOLATION are...

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  • 1974
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    Shadows from the Western Wall

    Shadows from the Western Wall

    1 1974 HD

    "SHADOWS FROM THE WESTERN WALL involves footage from Rome, the Eternal City, and from the woodlands of rural Maine. There is a bit of spoken English....

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  • 1973
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    Lovetape Film

    Lovetape Film

    1 1973 HD

    "The film may suggest the fear of losing a loved one. Desire. Yearning. Anger. Doubt. A female nude. A reiterated breast. A child with a bicycle. The...

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  • 1967
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    For Life, Against the War

    For Life, Against the War

    6 1967 HD

    First shown on January 30, 1967, FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR was an open-call, collective statement from American independent filmmakers disparate in...

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  • 1977
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    In the Mountains

    In the Mountains

    1 1977 HD

    "This is the fifth and final section of the 1977 film WEST BY NORTH. I feel it can stand by itself as a complete, if enigmatic statement. A casual...

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  • 1968
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    Gallery

    Gallery

    1 1968 HD

    "This short, silent film, a gallery of shots put together like a jazz improv, uses many devices to affect the image that comes from the camera. I...

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  • 1984
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    Winter Fence

    Winter Fence

    1 1984 HD

    "A fence to contend with winter storms. Auld Lang Syne. Memories of green. 'Benigne fac, Domine, in bona voluntate'. The organ at Fenway park on Yaz'...

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  • 1979
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    American Odyssey

    American Odyssey

    1 1979 HD

    American Odyssey is a look at Orff-Schulwerk in America in 1979. Filmed in 17 schools in 7 states, it documents the creative process in music,...

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  • 1969
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    Moments Ago

    Moments Ago

    1 1969 HD

    "Nancy and I were aware that our daughter Jennifer was getting ready to walk. She'd push her stroller around with great determination, and so I did...

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  • 1978
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    Snake Dance Teacher Dance

    Snake Dance Teacher Dance

    1 1978 HD

    "Snake Dance was shown in United States Embassies in Africa in the late 1970s and early 1980s to show the American culture was not all Jim Crow and...

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  • 1978
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    Wind in the Web

    Wind in the Web

    1 1978 HD

    A 16mm film by Abbott Meader, made as a visual response to the poem "Standing Here," by Karen Andersen Woodard.

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  • 1982
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    Spem in Alium

    Spem in Alium

    1 1982 HD

    "The title of the film is that of the great 40 voice part motet by Thomas Tallis, (1505 -1585) which he composed around 1575, rather recently in...

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  • 1981
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    Winter Li

    Winter Li

    6 1981 HD

    "A black one-eyed cat -does he dream of summer and having two eyes? A faceless snowman thrives in winter's starkness. There is frost and winter...

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  • 1982
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    Summerfall Black Berries

    Summerfall Black Berries

    1 1982 HD

    "A silent, in-camera improv that contemplates the early autumn colors and forms of some weathered, wild blackberries growing along a rural Maine...

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  • 1977
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    West By North

    West By North

    1 1977 HD

    "The direction of Western Culture's advance has been WXN, and now no further planetary geography remains into which to penetrate. Today there is talk...

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  • 1979
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    American Odyssey

    American Odyssey

    1 1979 HD

    American Odyssey is a look at Orff-Schulwerk in America in 1979. Filmed in 17 schools in 7 states, it documents the creative process in music,...

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  • 1964
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    An Interior

    An Interior

    1 1964 HD

    "Here is the print of the film that I built up during last spring and summer. You all and others may find it able to speak something to you." —...

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  • 1966
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    Vigil

    Vigil

    1 1966 HD

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  • 1966
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    Departure

    Departure

    1 1966 HD

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  • 1963
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    Bone

    Bone

    1 1963 HD

    "It is really a rather simple film — a sensuous response to mid-winter, playing off light and dark, moving and still, animate and inanimate...

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