Joel Shepard

By Sean Uyehara

Joel Shepard is about as understated as it gets. For several years now, he has been developing a devoted following as the film and video curator at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. And his current run of arguably the very best art films produced in the last year is a phenomenal coup for a venue competing with nearby San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the many high profile international film festivals in the Bay Area. Still, if you ask him or congratulate him, he shrugs and says, “Yeah, the program is looking good.” SF360 sat down with this wolf in sheep’s clothing.

SF360: How long have you been a curator?

Joel Shepard: I’ve been a film programmer for 18 years, and I’ve been here at YBCA for nine. My first film program was presented when I was a sophomore in high school, when I organized a screening of ‘Rock and Roll High School’ in the gym. Everyone hated it.

SF360: A lot of people I know just sort of ‘fall into’ public programming. They have a nose for it, but never really thought that that’s what they would end up doing per se. Is this the same for you or did you have you sights set on doing this kind of work?

Shepard: I got my degree in Film from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. However, I was never really interested in making my own films. It was too expensive, too difficult, and I didn’t really have any ideas. My technical skills were abysmal, and I was in awe of people who could make films. I did, though, love writing and talking about film, and watching film, and just kind of spreading enthusiasm about cinema in general. And I loved showing films and getting reactions from people. I liked to disturb people. It’s much harder to do that now. I’ve always been interested in supporting the widest possible range of cinema, from gut-bucket shitty exploitation films to fine-art, serious experimental cinema. I loved spending an afternoon at one of the threatening downtown Chicago grindhouses (like the Woods) and seeing some action or horror obscurity, and then heading back to school to watch hours of Stan Brakhage films. I saw the work as equally important, and still do.

SF360: CineKink was and is one of the most compelling, urgent and, well, kinky film series to run in SF. Is it difficult to get something like that going, both in terms of attracting a devoted public and getting the go-ahead from YBCA?

Shepard: I had been following what CineKink had been doing in New York for a couple of years. They seemed like a really unique festival, who were showing things that literally no one else was, and taking some big risks. With all of our various sex, kink, fetish, etc, communities here in SF, it seemed like a natural fit to try it here at YBCA. So we’ve done it three years in a row now. It started slowly, but the most recent edition sold out almost all screenings. YBCA is supportive of it. I’m very lucky here, and I have an enormous amount of freedom in programming. They’ve never seriously questioned any of the curatorial choices I’ve made, and have supported all of the programming that challenges people’s assumptions about what’s appropriate to show in a contemporary art center

05.21.2007