GERRY FIALKA  (310-306-7330 pfsuzy@aol.com), film curator, writer, lecturer, and paramedia ecologist has conducted interactive workshops from UCLA to MIT, from the Ann Arbor Film Festival to Culver City High School. Fialka gave two major lectures at The 2001 North America James Joyce Conference at UC Berkeley. His public interview series MESS (Media Ecology Soul Sessions), with the likes of Mike Kelley, Alexis Smith, Abraham Polonsky, Mary Woronov, Paul Krassner, Ann Magnuson, Heather Woodbury, Norman Klein, Chris Kraus, P. Adams Sitney, Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, Kristine McKenna, Ann Magnuson, John Sinclair, Grace Lee Boggs, Firesign Theatre's Phil Proctor among many others, began in 1997 and continues at different LA venues including Beyond Baroque. Fialka's interviews have been published in books by Mike Kelley and Sylvere Lotringer.   His MARSHALL McLUHAN-FINNEGANS WAKE Reading Club www.venicewake.org has explored media and literature at the Venice Public Library since 1995. His PXL THIS film festival www.indiespace.com/pxlthis has celebrated the PXL 2000 toy camera since 1991. Film Threat's Chris Gore deemed PXL THIS one of the ten best video festivals. Fialka's DOCUMENTAL series (now at the Unurban in Santa Monica myspace.com/sevendudleycinema) at Midnight Special, the oldest political bookstore in the world, ran for 8 years, and was praised as "L.A.'s pre-eminent documentary and experimental film showcase...the holy grail"-LA WEEKLY. In RES magazine, Holly Willis declared Gerry Fialka the "Los Angeles-based independent media hero." In the Independent Film & Video Monthly, Willis proclaimed Fialka an "exemplary devotee of cinema. Thanks to Fialka's penchant for the weird and wild, L.A. gets to see material we wouldn't otherwise." The LA TIMES calls Fialka "the multi-media Renaissance man." His 7 DUDLEY CINEMA series (www.81x.com/7dudley/cinema) continues the tradition of DOCUMENTAL at Sponto Gallery in Venice, where the beats used to read poetry (Venice West Cafe). Fialka has worked for Frank Zappa (for nearly ten years as an archivist), George Carlin and Filmex. He has interviewed the likes of Amiri Baraka, Carla Bley, Horace Silver, Jon Hendricks, Annie Ross, George Clinton, Paul Plimley, Oscar Brown Jr, Ben Watson, Craig Baldwin, Grace Lee Boggs, William Pope.L among others for Artillery, AMASS magazine, LA Jazz Scene, Jazz News, Bird, Flipside, and PACIFICA's KPFK radio.   "I am very impressed by Gerry Fialka's energy in bringing together groups of people to think about ideas. That is very much in the McLuhan spirit to create and foster interdisiplinary, living, educational projects in which people can talk about ideas. He creates forums that bring together a plurality of critical perspectives into one multivalent conversation. " - Janine Marchessault, author of MARSHAL McLUHAN: COSMIC MEDIA.   "Gerry Fialka's MESS series is a unique opportunity to meet special artists in a unique, intimate and revealing setting. His intelligence and dedication to research leads to a stimulating and highly interactive interview that is both entertaining and amazingly enlightening." - Phil "Firesign Theatre" Proctor.   "Gerry Fialka is very special, well prepared and ready to take risks - I learned about my self! My kind of interviewer." -Martin Perlich, author THE ART OF THE INTERVIEW. "I have participated in Gerry Fialka's interactive workshops at the Ann Arbor Film Festivals in 2006 and 2007. He is willing to enter in new discussions even if they go against his current views. Fialka's multilayered delivery of ideas encourages the search for new questions and new paradigms that extend beyond. He is well-informed, off-beat and articulate - one of the most fascinating people I've met at the AAFF." - Keith Jeffries, Ascalon Films "I showed my film Hippies From Hell at one of the most special venues in the world, 7 Dudley Cinema in Venice, CA. Curator Gerry Fialka is a wonderful host, able to create a joyful relaxing and concentrated atmosphere. During the Q&A he showed himself as a very eloquent critic asking deep and serious questions- always with humor, knowledge and full of energy." - Ine Poppe, Professor at the Willem de Kooning Art Academy, Amsterdam   "Gerry Fialka is one of your grand 1970s collage sensibilities, conceptually leaping--like so many of the flickering Film Festival experiments that have nourished him for decades--from PXL to McLuhan to James Joyce to Duchamp.  As he laces it all together like a deerskin moccasin, you realize that most college students are deprived of witnessing this kind of associative thinking in action. Gerry Fialka's fast-paced workshops are an antidote for the corporatized classroom that only meets students' low expectations yet fails to go beyond. This guy goes, and takes them, beyond."- Michael R. Mosher, Assoc. Professor, Art/Communication Multimedia, Saginaw Valley State University "Gerry Fialka is a cinema treasure, a champion of the rarely-seen, forgotten or neglected films that illuminate our times; a man who has devoted much of his life to the exploration of art and philosophy and human behavior as shown in the movies.  For nearly four decades Gerry has introduced the startling works of unknown or rarely-seen filmmakers to audiences who enjoy the fascinating range of his questions and the surprising answers inspired by our urban impresario of the flicks, always a student of the art form he loves, from its depths to its heights." - William Richert, film director "Winter Kills"   "Curator Gerry Fialka puts together events of films both experimental and socially conscious." - LA City Beat "LOS ANGELES: GERRY FIALKA. For a decade, scavenger-artist Gerry Fialka – living and operating from a shed built of vinyl LPs, cassette-tapes and videos in a back lot in Venice, California – has been leading a Finnegans Wake reading-group (venicewake.org) in a Los Angeles public library and mounting festivals of homemade PXL-2000 movies (indiespace.com/pxlthis). He proposes a revolutionary, propertyless artistic communism in which the life works of Captain Beefheart, George Clinton and Rahsaan Roland Kirk cross-pollinate and merge with the whole mediated environment of late capitalism, where playtime unravels the knots of economic domination. Fialka’s politics of experience refuse conventional literacy and cultural value. He yearns to make real the tokenistic substitutions of ‘art’ and ‘literature’, a collective psychogeographical testing of limits as the masses turn against the blandishments of a reality defined by TV, and begin to interrogate their artificial surroundings: ‘as question time drew nighing and the map of the souls’ groupography rose in relief within their quarterings’ (FW, p. 476). In July, Fialka addressed the James Joyce 2001 Conference in Berkeley, drawing connections between Finnegans Wake and the oeuvres of Frank Zappa and Marshall McLuhan." - Ben Watson, Mute Magazine 9-01. Gerry is the main curator for events at Sponto Gallery, home of 7 DUDLEY CINEMA, which plays a crucial role promoting counter-current moving image artists in a cozy community-oriented setting. Since November 2002, we have shown films free to the public with the filmmakers often present for discussion. We are an all volunteer group. Visit - www.81x.com/7dudley/cinema. Past screenings have included Craig Baldwin's Tribulation 99, SOS & Sonic Outlaws, Watts Tower Film Festival, Critical Mass-Pedal Revolution, Lenny Bruce night, Uncensored Cartoons & much more. Our speakers have included Orson Welles' cameraman Gary Graver, culture jammer Craig Baldwin, director William Richert, political satirist Paul Krassner, archivist Stephen Parr, director Ted Bonnitt, experimental pioneer Chick Strand, producer Susan West (IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL), author Janine Marchessault, screenwriter/critic F.X. Feeney, experimental documentarian Philip Hoffman, Firesign Theater's Peter Bergman & Phil Proctor, poet Michael C. Ford, Ruben Guevara (Ruben & the Jets), Little Willie G. & Jimmy Espinoza of Thee Midniters, author Domenic Priore, jazz archivist Mark Cantor, Country Joe McDonald, Larry Taylor & Fito de la Parra of CANNED HEAT, producer Ken Kubernick, experimental filmmaker Alfonzo Alvarez, Lord Buckley's daughter Laurie, director Richard Elfman, comedian/ARISTOCRATS director Paul Provenza, Corman vet & author Beverly Gray, Pamela Des Barres, Victor Haydon (Mascara Snake of Captain Beefheart) film historian Michael Henry Wilson, experimental film pioneer Curtis Harrington and I AM CUBA cameraman Alexander Calzatti.   Curator Gerry Fialka has been involved in: *The Ann Arbor Film Festival, the oldest experimental film festival in the world, *PXL THIS (www.indiespace.com/pxlthis), the annual Pixelvision (toy video camera) festival, established in 1991. Film Threat's Chris Gore deemed PXL THIS one of the ten best video festivals. *His DOCUMENTAL series (now at the Unurban in Santa Monica myspace.com/sevendudleycinema) at Midnight Special, the oldest political bookstore in the world, ran for 8 years, and was praised as "L.A.'s pre-eminent documentary and experimental film showcase...the holy grail" -LA Weekly. In RES magazine, Holly Willis declared Gerry Fialka the "Los Angeles-based independent media hero." In the INDEPENDENT FILM AND VIDEO MONTHLY, Willis proclaimed Fialka an "exemplary devotee of cinema. Thanks to Fialka's penchant for the weird and wild, L.A. gets to see material we wouldn't otherwise." The LA TIMES calls Fialka "the multi-media Renaissance man." 7 DUDLEY CINEMA was featured on Warren Olney's NPR radio show, "Which Way L.A.?" on Santa Monica's KCRW. 7 DUDLEY CINEMA shows films at Sponto Art Gallery, which was the home of the infamous Venice West Cafe from 1955-66 where the Beats read their poetry. Join poets every 4th Tuesday at 7pm for open poetry and spoken word- free admission. Sponto Gallery has sponsored children's art shows, raised money for New Orleans' musicians and helped raise money for Venice Food Not Bombs, who feed the homeless. Jazz great Azar Lawrence played a free 2005 concert at Sponto Gallery.   7 DUDLEY CINEMA stresses dialogue on films, art, culture and politics. Gerry Fialka's other film series DOCUMENTAL has been praised by LA Magazine as "eye-opening with postscreening chats that cook." This tradition of examination continues at 7 DUDLEY CINEMA, DOCUMENTAL and at Fialka's MESS (Media Ecology Soul Sessions) public interview series. 7 Dudley Avenue, now known as Sponto Gallery (established in 1984), was the home of the infamous Venice West Cafe from 1958 to 1966 - an important birthplace for the Beat movement, much like North Beach in San Francisco, Greenwich Village in New York and the Left Bank in Paris. Sponto Gallery retrieves the explorations of Alan Kaprow's Happenings, Jack Smith's experimental films and the Fluxus art movement with its various art, film, music, poetry and comedy events. Gallery owner Sponto and curator Gerry Fialka apply Albert Schweitzer's maxim: "Do something for others - something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it." Visit 81x.com/7dudley/cinema AND myspace.com/sevendudleycinema for more information. Wallace Berman wrote on the walls of the Venice West Cafe: "Art is Love is God." One of the founders, poet Stuart Z. Perkoff, declared "All words are holy in the right mouth and right ears." The people who form the Sponto Gallery community are creating ways of communicating that make one aware of the processes and biases of communication. They stimulate the discovery of otherness. The Sponto Family evokes Joseph Beuys resurrecting Black Mountain College's faculty with Sun Ra, Martha Graham, Bucky Fuller, Frank Zappa, Sonia Sanchez, Lord Buckley and Luis Bunuel as instructors. They seem to be verbs: illuminate, demystify, unlearn, persevere, reinvent, question, interconnect, cross-pollinate: they broaden horizons, and make, match and mirror centers without margins. Diane & Abraham Butler's CIRCLE OF COLOR summer and winter solstice shows at Sponto continue to transform art and music celebrations. Sponto events, like the Dumpster Diving Fashion Show, Ms Beatnik Contest, Urpomes spoken word series, Tim Leary Film Festival, the History Of Venice in Film inspire diversity.