Jerry Tartaglia is an experimental filmmaker and writer whose work in Experimental Film and Queer Cinema spans four decades. He studied with the Abstract Expressionist Painter, Harry Koursaros, who introduced him to the work of Jack Smith, Jonas Mekas, and Gregory Markopoulos. Later, he co-founded Berks Filmmakers Inc, one of the longest surviving Micro-Cinema Showcases for Experimental Media Art in the U.S. In the 1970s he produced his lost feature, Lawless with Warhol Factory star Pope Ondine. He also assisted Tony Conrad in the manufacture & production of the Yellow Movie series in 1973. He was the first to write about the gay sensibility in American Avant-Garde film (1977) and his work is an ongoing examination of Identity and media politics through Cinema. The A.I.D.S. Trilogy (A.I.D.S.C..R.E.A.M., Ecce Homo, and Final Solutions) made during the early days of the epidemic in America, has been screened around the world. 
His work was included in the Century-end retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, "The Art of the 20th Century." Seven of his films have been premiered at the Berlinale since 1990. In 1993 he was one of the twelve artists who created the Red Ribbon as a symbol of A.I.D.S. awareness through the Artists' Caucus of Visual AIDS in NYC, paving the way for awareness ribbons of all kinds. In the early 1990s, he began the work of restoring and preserving the film legacy of Jack Smith. He reconstructed Smith's three feature films and eleven shorts for the Smith Estate, and in 2011 restored the Smith oeuvre for the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in NYC. 

His recent work in Live Film Performance premiered at MIX 24, the NY Queer Media Festival, and uses celluloid film, digital imaging, and live action to explore the element of Presence in moving image art. He also teaches Cinema, writing, and media production.

Jerry Tartaglia will discuss the horror of celluloid film preservation and the pitfalls of restoring the Jack Smith film oeuvre in an environment of art sharks, manic lobsters and dead fish.