.Hippest Museum Curator

Steve Seid, Pacific Film Archive

Once upon a time, film museums and archives were mostly devoted to the past, to preserving, occasionally restoring, and otherwise enshrining the often-fragile remains of film culture, one that began at the close of the 19th century. But times change, and these days Steve Seid is riding a high, wild wave of 21st-century technology in his forward-looking programming for UC Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive, where he serves under the less-than-descriptive title of video curator. In addition to regularly screening new shorts and features by video and digital-video artists, Seid has broken through in the past year with such projects as “Games People Play,” an ongoing series that chronicles the growing influence of the enormous gaming industry on mainstream theatrical films; and “PowerPoint to the People,” a multipart celebration, complete with juried competition, that has raised the stuck-in-a-conference-room business tool to a fine art, open to designers and culturati such as David Byrne. As Seid explained it, PowerPoint “offers up new conventions to be dismantled by restless and adventurous practitioners.” Restlessness and adventure in an art museum. My, my.

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