Alex Goldblum
Intellectual Biography
February 7, 2012
I was born in Baltimore, Maryland on May 7, 1985.
I spent my childhood and adolescence in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At Taylor Allderdice High School, I took up darkroom photography, 8mm filmmaking, journalism, screenwriting, and digital video. I first started using non-linear digital video editing software at fifteen years of age at Pittsburgh Filmmakers Institute. This early interaction with the production of darkroom and digital photography, as well as early projects in Internet website publishing, and video production would give color to my artistry and give contrast to my understanding of the world for the rest of my life.
As a boy, I liked to plug my father’s Panasonic VHS video camera into the VCR and look at my own image reflected in the television. Early on I formed the notion that I could create images on the television by my own. I had a ‘video art’ toy as a young boy, which allowed me to draw pictures and illustrate on the television screen. I remember being mesmerized by the colorful lights of the screen, and wondering what marvelous possibilities existed with these electronics. For my fourteenth birthday my father bought me my first personal computer, a Gateway 2000, which I customized to include an analog video in/out card for editing with Adobe Premiere video editing software. It was then, in high school, that I began to shoot and edit my own short videos in my bedroom and at school. Around the same time, I began experimenting with storytelling on the Internet. My first website was a story about a fantasy island called “Kokojo Island” which I illustrated in Microsoft Paint and posted to a server for the world to see.
Pittsburgh provided me with a rich cultural environment in which to learn and grow. I divided my time between the many movie theatres, dramatic venues, museums, art galleries, and concert halls: the Carnegie Museum of Art and Natural History, the Andy Warhol Museum, the Carnegie Library, the Pittsburgh Playhouse where the theatre students performed, Heinz Hall, and the Benedum Center, where the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra played, The O’Reilly Theatre, The Pittsburgh Public Theatre, and more. It was in Pittsburgh where I first confronted the fine arts and began to experiment in creating my own artistic aesthetic. I have my aunt Erika Kreisman to thank for being my cultural and political steward. As a young man, she took me to see many concerts and plays, most notably to my first Bob Dylan concert, and numerous film screenings at the Regent Square Theatre, The Melwood Screening Room, and The Manor Theatre.
In early 2001, I visited Havana, Cuba as a humanitarian envoy for the Jewish Solidarity Committee. In 2002, I voyaged to the Yucatan Peninsula where I visited the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza.
In August of 2003, I moved to Philadelphia, PA to attend Temple University where I majored in Film and Media Arts. I spent my time engaged in the Academic exploration of experimental, critical, political, and educational applications of Film, Video, and Multimedia. In 2003, the war in Iraq was in full swing. Thousands of protesters took the streets of Philadelphia, marching down Broad Street past City Hall, then down Market Street to the Independence Mall. There, in front of Constitution Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, I shot the video footage that I would later call “Peace and Freedom,” a short documentary which won second place at a student political film festival at Temple University later that year.
In Summer 2004, I spent five weeks abroad in Spain, where I attended the Universal Forum of the Cultures in Barcelona and studied Spanish cinema and Spanish language at the University of Oviedo in Asturias. In May of 2005, I attended the Cannes Film Festival in France as an intern for the American Pavilion. In the summer of 2005, I spent six weeks abroad in India where I wrote an interactive web-log and produced numerous short videos. Most notably, I directed and produced two short documentaries on my experience in India. I completed my research in rural Dhrangadhra, Gujarat in partnership with Dr. Jayasinhji Jhala, director of the Temple University Anthropology Media Lab. The two documentaries from India, The Snake Charmer and Goldblum in Gujarat, are currently being distributed by Documentary Educational Resources.
In November 2005, I traveled to China where I screened the high-definition video I Love You So Much at the Beijing Film Academy’s 4th International Student Film & Video Festival. Spending a week in Beijing was a rich and rewarding experience. I engaged with Chinese film students in topics ranging from experimental video and freedom of speech on the Internet. I found that for most film students at BFA, experimental video was quite uncommon. My brief encounters with “The Great Firewall of China” gave me an indication, in contrast, of the great freedom of speech enjoyed in the United States. When my film was screened in front of no less than a thousand film students and their professors, I stood up gleefully in front of the audience and said in Mandarin, “Ni hao ma, Wo zhen ai ni!” Translation: “Hello, I love you so much!”
I was formerly employed as the Vice President of Production for Invictus Films, Inc, an independent film company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In December 2005, the company’s first feature “The Judas Kiss” debuted as the grand premiere event at the Monaco International Film Festival, a celebration of Non-Violent Film.
I consider myself an avid traveler, having been to Europe on five occasions and to Asia twice; traveling to countries far and wide has brought me into contact with diverse cultures, beliefs, and
practices, and has informed my worldview accordingly. I feel truly blessed to have taken a 21st century grande tour at such a young and impressionable age.
During the Fall and Spring of 2005 I produced two experimental live streaming video programs via the Internet with the help of Susan Jacobson, PhD, an alumnus of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU and Kurtis Sensenig, an associate professor at TEMPLE MURL (Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab). The shows, entitled Dissent in America and The Revolution, were a great success in foreshadowing the future of live video interaction on a truly global scale via Internet mediated telecommunications.
Most recently I have begun working with Judith Malina, founder and director of The Living Theatre, on avant-garde and experimental theatrical productions as a video artist and grant writer. My Aunt Erika met Judith Malina and Julian beck in 1976 when The Living Theater was performing street theatre in Pittsburgh. Later the next year she traveled all across Europe in Volkswagen buses with the troupe, performing in plays such as “The Money Tower” and “Six Public Acts, in The Living Theatre’s style of edgy, non-violent political street theater. During the tour, they enjoyed artist-in-residence status in Turin, Italy, where they stayed for one month. It was there in Europe that my Aunt Erika learned about collective creation and the confluence of art and politics, a lesson she would impart on me decades later. In Pittsburgh, she introduced me to the wonders of drama, music, and photography. She brought me to see antiquities from far and wide, both in the field, and in museums, at home and abroad. Then in August 2008, she introduced me to Judith Malina and The Living Theatre. My life as an artist would never be the same. Life took on a new, more critical meaning, as I found a creative outlet to express my ideas poetically and theatrically as a non-violent peace activist and artist.
In the fall of 2008, I first attended rehearsals for The Living Theatre’s production of “Eureka!” an experimental play based on a book of the same name written by Edgar Allen Poe. I contributed my expertise to the video design and recording of the performance to great success. In January 2009, I was privileged to be part of the ensemble’s fiftieth anniversary production of “The Connection” by Jack Gelber. I learned how to build sets, hang lights, and some of the basics of acting from my diverse and varied roles in The Living Theatre. In 2011 I completed a short film entitled "The Living Theatre Presents: The Clinton Street Suite," an overview of plays by the company dating from 2006-2011.
The most recent short film I have produced is entitled "The Thin Green Line." It was shot in Israel and Palestine in January 2011. In January 2012, I graduated from The New School with a Master of Arts in Media Studies.