On Mike Henderson
Posted by | Ziva Schatz | Posted on | March 30, 2016
This week we are excerpting this important interview with Mike Henderson in Black Camera which thoroughly investigates Henderson’s extensive body of work over his artistic career!
![Mike Henderson, still from Down Hear, 1972. Image courtesy of the artist and the Academy Film Archive](http://sites.saic.edu/cate/wp-content/uploads/sites/100/2016/01/0331_DownHear_MHenderson-620x453.jpg)
Mike Henderson, still from Down Hear, 1972. Image courtesy of the artist and the Academy Film Archive
I’m here at the Black Film Center/Archive with emeritus professor Mike Henderson, noted and accomplished painter, blues guitarist, and experimental filmmaker, on the occasion of a retrospective showing of his experimental short films.
What I hope to discuss is your film practice and its relationship to your other artistic endeavors, painting and music. Let’s start, Mike, with this question: is your film work in conversation with your painting and social concerns?
First I would say that I’m a painter who makes films and plays blues guitar. Filmmaking came to me out of a need that was missing from my figurative painting. And it dates back to the moment and day when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated.