Alfred Guzzetti has been working as an independent maker of documentary and experimental films and videos for more than 35 years. His film Air won first prize in the experimental category at the 1972 Chicago International Film Festival. This and other experimental films of the ’70s and ’80s led to a series of short videos that includes A Tropical Story, The Tower of Industrial Life, History of the Sea, and Still Point. Collaborations with anthropologists Ákos Östör and Lina Fruzzetti resulted in Seed and Earth and Khalfan and Zanzibar.
Guzzetti has made not only observational documentaries such as Scenes from Childhood but films that deal with the passage of time. Family Portrait Sittings, Beginning Pieces, The House on Magnolia Avenue, and Time Exposure all include material filmed over periods of years. He collaborated with Susan Meiselas and Richard Rogers on Living at Risk: The Story of a Nicaraguan Family and Pictures from a Revolution, and with Susan Meiselas on Reframing History, and the recent update of Living at Risk entitled A Family in History: Living at Risk & The Barrios Family 25 Years Later (1985/2011).
He also done collaborative work with composers: with Ivan Tcherepnin on Sky Piece, with Earl Kim on Exercises en Route, and with Kurt Stallmann on SONA, Breaking Earth, and Moon Crossings. Guzzetti’s work has been shown at the Edinburgh, Berlin, and Rotterdam Film Festivals as well as the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. Guzzetti is Professor of Visual Arts at Harvard University.
