Judy Bloch moves on after 29 years at PFA
By Miguel Pendás for SF360.org
For nearly 30 years Judy Bloch has been behind the classy film publications at the Pacific Film Archive, producing some of the best film annotation in the world, as a writer, editor and guiding presence. She recently retired from UC Berkeley and took a job managing publications for SFMOMA. We asked her about her life and times at PFA.
SF360: What was your background? Where did you grow up?
Judy Bloch: I grew up in West L.A., and like most of my friends moved up to Berkeley to go to school and never moved back. Why would you? This was a cultural paradise in the late ’60s, early ’70s, even though it coalesced around some awful things like the war. I was here during People’s Park; I recall getting tear-gassed in Dwinelle Hall. Is that possible? The big antiwar strike deprived me of finishing a class I loved on existentialism in literature, taught by Hubert Dreyfus (who I still see around campus in his green Karmann Ghia). At least we got through The Brothers K., lectures I’ll never forget. Those things meant so much. Everything meant so much then.
SF360: You studied film?
Bloch: I didn’t major in film; there was no film major at Cal then. But it was a few years after graduating that I was inspired to study film. I’d been to a PFA screening of All I Desire in Wheeler Auditorium with Douglas Sirk in person. Someone asked him if the studio had forced the happy ending on him. ‘That was not a happy ending,’ he replied in his gruff accent. Sometime after that I went to another Wheeler screening, of The Passenger with Antonioni in person, and another splendid retort: ‘If I could answer that question in words I wouldn’t have made a movie.’ I can’t say why, but after those two experiences I said, ‘This is for me.’ So I went back to Cal on an adjunct basis and took film courses with Marilyn Fabe (still inspiring film students today), and two great visiting professors, Yvette Biro and Raymond Durgnat. I didn’t get a film degree but boy did I get a jolt of movie love, and that’s all I needed.
SF360: Tell me about when you first started working at PFA.
Bloch: Like so much in my life, I was in the right place at the right time. After finishing a couple of semesters of film classes and then spending a year in Europe, I applied to volunteer at PFA to write film notes. Edith Kramer had never heard of me—no one had, there was nothing to hear—so she must have said aloud, ‘Who’s this Judy Bloch?’ And her office mate Tom Schmidt, PFA’s wonderful general manager, who happened to be married to Marilyn Fabe, my film teacher of a couple of years earlier, said ‘Take her.’ Marilyn had talked to him about me, evidently.
So there I was, volunteering for the notes, and also proofreading a catalogue the Archive was putting together of its Daiei collection, a large number of prints donated by the Japanese studio. Did you know there were such genres as ‘Advertising Melodrama’ and ‘Department Store Comedy?’ It never occurred to me to query anything, I just proofread the copy. Meanwhile, as Tom Luddy had left PFA, Edith was allowed to hire a half-time film notes editor and a half-time publicist to take those duties off her plate. After watching a parade of people I knew to be more experienced writers than I go upstairs to Edith’s office to interview for ‘my’ job, I was offered the position. Shelley Diekman took the position of publicist, and the rest is history.
SF360: Was this what you wanted to do or did you grow into the job?
Bloch: It grew into me. I mean, can you imagine the film education I got, interpreting Edith’s programs? Edith is not only a great curator, she’s a great teacher, and the way she teaches is by presenting the material to you and letting you figure it out. And the brilliance of her programming is that you always do—figure it out—and you think it’s you who is brilliant. So she almost never told me what to write about the films, unless of course I got it all wrong, which could happen, too.
So as my sophistication in watching films grew, my writing grew more nuanced, and that in turn fed my ability to view a film. This is one of my pet themes, that film is like a tabula rasa and open to many responses, and one of the responses you can have is to write about it. And you bring everything you know into that writing, so that what you write is itself something, a new thing.
So, yeah, I grew into the job. I should note that after a decade or so I became editor of the art material, as well, in what was then called the Calendar and evolved into today’s Art & Film Notes. Eventually I edited all the museum’s materials including books. That’s not the subject of this interview, but I did want to say that, because I was deeply involved in the Berkeley Art Museum side of things for many years there. Juliet Clark has been editor of Art & Film Notes for a few years now, and she and Jason Sanders write the film notes, along with some of the curators.
SF360: What did you do on a typical day?
Bloch: Every day was atypical.
SF360: After working in the same place for 29 years, it must have really sunk into your subconscious. What are your dreams about work like?
Bloch: You don’t want to know.
SF360: Yes, I do.
Bloch: I’ll tell you a story that sounds like a dream about work, but it wasn’t a dream, it was real. I happened to have been in London the week before the royal wedding, and I picked up a wonderful souvenir, a little mirror with Charles and Diana’s image on the right-hand corner, taking up part of the mirror. I had it propped up on my desk at PFA. My desk in the ’80s was in an alcove behind the screen, which served as a corridor if you were going to the projection booth. One day who should walk through but Susan Sontag. She stopped at my desk, looked at my Charles and Diana mirror, and said, ‘I like that.’ ‘It’s great,’ I began, ‘because you see yourself with Charles and Diana.’ ‘I know,’ she said, and walked on. Of course you do, you’re Susan Sontag, thought I, and I am SUCH an idiot . . .
SF360: What do you love about work?
Bloch: I love the people and I love the subject matter. What more could I ask?
SF360: What, in 29 years, has been your greatest contribution?
Bloch: That’s probably for someone else to say, but if you’ll move the soapbox a little more towards me, I want to talk about the contribution PFA’s film notes have made. The note form is a very particular kind of writing, with its own rhythm and flow, and can be very beautiful. In our better moments we tried to have our notes contribute to the literature on the film or director, at the same time as being a good read in themselves. Just as films speak to one another, the notes speak to one another as well, so they must read well together. I feel glad and proud that I’ve left the notes in the hands of Juliet and Jason, who understand this. I think it’s a tradition worth carrying on.
SF360: What about your job drove you crazy?
Bloch: That’s water under the bridge. I think only good thoughts now.
SF360: In 2005 PFA went through a transition in leadership from Edith Kramer to Susan Oxtoby. How did that change things for you?
Bloch: Right, and at that time we were transitioning into Juliet’s editorship of the magazine, as well. Coming from Cinematheque Ontario, Susan is if anything more supportive of a dedicated PFA writing program. I’m sure if I had stayed we would have done books together. As it was, the PFA curators—Kathy Geritz and Steve Seid, in partnership with Steve Anker—and I were tied up with a massive volume on the history of Bay Area avant-garde film and video that was submitted to the publishers literally as I was walking out the door. A fine ending, and for them, a new beginning, as I hope they will now have time to do some other writing and publishing.
SF360: Do you like to travel? What’s your favorite place?
Bloch: Of course, I love to travel, not that I do it much anymore. We bought a house. End of story. My favorite place is Greece, for a lot of reasons. But my favorite KIND of place is ancient ruins, be they Greek or Anasazi in New Mexico. I’ve had some of my most transcendent travel experiences in that kind of place—time travel.
SF360: Any travel for work?
Bloch: My travel is only personal, with my family—I don’t go to film festivals and the like. But someday I hope to get to the Pordenone silent film festival, which I know you go to. And I’ve seen so many Japanese movies I sometimes have to remind myself I’ve never actually been to Japan, and want to go.
SF360: What was it like having your husband, Steve Seid, work in the same place as you? How did you two meet?
Bloch: Well, you know, Steve’s a great writer, but being your husband’s editor is not something I would recommend to everyone. The image of ‘his harridan editor’ comes to mind. In the beginning we had to go to the corner cafe to duke it out away from the rest of the staff. Then, when he came to realize I’m always right, well, things calmed down.
Shelley introduced us, actually. They were friends. Steve joined the PFA staff as video curator in 1988, after our son Nathanael was born. BAM/PFA’s a very family-friendly place—Nathanael was one of the gang when he was growing up.
SF360: Did you ever participate in choosing the films?
Bloch: I cocurated I think three, maybe four, series over the years with PFA curators. It was great fun, but I didn’t have to do the heavy lifting of finding good prints and booking them. That usually fell to Kathy Geritz’s expertise.
SF360: What are your top three favorite films?
Bloch: Ah, a question I never answer. Of course there are countless films I love, but it’s like having more than one kid—you can give each one all your love, and it’s not a contradiction. I don’t have a hierarchy or even a pantheon.
But if I did, Rossellini’s Voyage in Italy would always appear in it. I have some epiphany films that will always be important to me for what I saw in them and what they meant to me at first viewing. Antonioni’s Monica Vitti trilogy is that for me—*L’Avventura*, Eclipse and Red Desert. For some reason I fixated on her hair blowing in the wind in all three films—but in Eclipse, the wind was from an electric fan. I tried to get that into my film notes, but that’s where the short form lets you down. They end up reading like notes by a madwoman.
I love Japanese cinema, and over the years had so many memorable moments discovering Japanese films in the collection alongside Mona Nagai, PFA’s collection curator and a specialist in Japanese film. We’d watch them on the 35mm flatbed. But I remember one she screened in the theater, the old Gund Theater, You Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum, a mid-’50s film by Kinoshita. None of us had ever seen it. The lights went up and we were all in tears, including Edith.
SF360: You just started your new job as managing editor at SFMOMA a couple of weeks ago. What’s it like so far?
Bloch: I’m so thrilled to be on the book publications staff there. What a great team. I can’t believe my luck. Again, right place at the right time.
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