Enduring Ornament

A dark and sensual experimental narrative that explores a skilled technical worker's fantasies during her nights as a femme in the lower east side of New York.

Film of Jack Smith's apartment starring Penny Arcade before it was reposed by the "evil landlords."

Sound composition by Zeena Parkins. Erotic dance performance by Goddess Rosemary.

Using Pixelvision video transferred to 16mm film, these works map the visual space of emotional investigation.

16mm / color / sound

MM Serra and Jonas Mekas sign a paper in 3D.

Exploration of the life and work of Jack Waters and Peter Cramer.

"Chop Off exposes the dark, fearful recesses of the human psyche by filming the body modification of performance artist R.K. Literally risking "life and limb," R.K.'S body is his medium and amputation is his art. The very act of filming him often stimulates a cascading range of emotions, from disgust to fear to dread." - Tribeca Film Festival 2009

MARY MAGDALENE is a construct of personal, mythological and political projections of the fluid identity of the individual. This digital representation fragments and layers the profile that is representative of multiple gender identities. These fragments and layers use the reflections of the elements through which gender is culturally established. In the religious community, the name “Mary Magdalene” is the woman as flesh, the wanton woman. This film emphasizes the camera as a weapon for the filmmaker to create her own visual projection.

A period-style advertisement recontextualized from a feminist perspective.

"... portrays the views of a first generation Italian-American woman though her life experiences as immigrant, factory worker, and as the 'emotional heart of the family.'" – Fabrice Ziolkowski

16mm / color and b/w / sound

Delicate fleeting imagery catches the flurry of the city’s changing moods.

Colorful, energetic, delicate and sensual, this early short by M.M. Serra presents her unique vision of eroticism and poetic cinema in a fast-paced collage of dreamlike imagery. Fragments of a poem by C. Breeze are read and manipulated in a manner recalling the tape experiments of Steve Reich. Rich reds and deep blues stutter and sparkle along with her descriptions of love and "canine sex." TURNER is a brief glimpse at Serra's roots in the New York avant-garde and the Film-makers' Cooperative.

La Serenissima drifts through the mythic and material layers of Venice, tracing a lineage of women who refused to remain ornamental in a city built on spectacle. Against the shifting tides and mirrored surfaces of the lagoon, the film evokes figures such as Veronica Franco, the Renaissance poet and courtesan who wielded language as power; Luisa Casati, the avant-garde muse who turned her own life into a living artwork; and Peggy Guggenheim, the modern patron who transformed Venice into a sanctuary for radical art.

Inspired by Christo, a Christmas celebration wrapping (with red and green ribbons) of a seaside house in Puerto Pinesco, Mexico. (16mm / color / sound)