- Source: Chet Pancake
Chet Pancake is an American filmmaker and musician. He is a co-founder of the Red Room Collective, the High Zero Foundation, the Charm City Kitty Club and the Transmodern Festival. He is currently an assistant professor in the Film and Media Arts Program at Temple University and director of the Black Oak House Gallery. His documentary film Black Diamonds (2006), an examination of mountaintop removal mining, has received a number of awards.
Personal life
Pancake grew up in the areas of Romney, West Virginia and Summersville, West Virginia, and moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1993. His sister is writer Ann Pancake, and his brother is actor Sam Pancake. The writer Breece D'J Pancake was also a relative. When he moved to Baltimore in 1994, he found his calling to producing and filmmaking. By producing and film making, his work portrayed exclusive subject matters that gained the publics eyes." Pancake currently resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with his partner.
Career
In Baltimore, Pancake co-founded the Red Room Collective and High Zero Foundation. He also became a self-trained improvising percussionist and began making films, which ranged from short, experimental meditations to feature-length narratives and documentaries. He was a founding member of the Charm City Kitty Club (GLBT Performance Series) and the Transmodern Festival (Live.Art.Action.)
Pancake currently lives in Philadelphia, where he is an assistant professor in the Film and Media Arts Program at Temple University and the director of Black Oak House Gallery.
Beginning around 2001, his primary project was a documentary about the mountaintop removal project of the coal in southern West Virginia and its resulting environmental and humanitarian consequences titled Black Diamonds. Black Diamonds: Mountaintop Removal & The Fight for Coalfield Justice was released by Bull Frog Films for distribution in December 2006.
Pancake received a master's degree in fine arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May 2012. As recipient of the Edes Foundation Emerging Artist Fellowship, he began the film Genius Project as his Edes Year project. In it he documents five avant-garde artists who identify as queer women: Eileen Myles, Barbara Hammer, Jibz Cameron, Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips.
In 2012, Pancake began working on Queer Genius, a documentary interviewing and following queer-identifying artists Eileen Myles, Barbara Hammer, Rasheedah Phillips, Camae Ayewa, and Jibz Cameron. In addition to the Edes Foundation, Queer Genius has received support from the Leeway Foundation and Temple University. The film began screening at various festivals and events in 2019, including Women Make Waves International Film Festival in Taipei, Taiwan and the Toronto Queer Film Festival in 2020. Many of the screenings were moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Queer Genius has won awards including “Audience Prize Best Feature 2020” at QFest Houston and "Boundary Breaker Award" at the Buffalo International Film Festival 2020.
In an interview given in 2019, Pancake talked about currently projects, including a short film set in West Virginia that addresses family dynamic and addiction. This will be an addition to the artwork series "Bloodland." He is also working on a larger video project that addresses the emotional and somatic resonances of ecological activism and factors surround fossil fuel extraction on the East Coast of the United States.
Film and videography
2006 release, Black Diamonds: Mountaintop Removal & The Fight for Coalfield Justice, DV 72 minutes; screened at the Documentary Fortnight Series at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Feb 2008
2009, Jay Dreams
2010, bitterbittertears
2011, Optical Scores
2019, Queer Genius
Awards
2002, Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award
2006, Key to the city, South Charleston, West Virginia
2006, Paul Robeson Independent Media Award
2007, Jack Spadaro Documentary Award
2007, Silver Chris Award – Best in Science & Technology Division – Columbus International Film Festival
2012, Edes Foundation Emerging Artist Fellowship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
2013, American Composers Forum, Subito grant for Axon Ladder, Bhob Rainey, Catherine Pancake, Meg Foley
2014, Pew Center for Arts & Heritage “No Idea Too Ridiculous” grant for Allele Wake, Catherine Pancake, Bhob Rainey, Christina Zani
References
External links
Black Diamonds film page
Leeway Foundation Bio
Temple University Bio
Interview with Chet Pancake
Chet Pancake at IMDb
Further reading
Film and Everyday Eco-Disasters Robin L Murray; Joseph K Heumann