Biography

Anthony Silvestri is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Media School at Indiana University. Broadly, his research considers issues surrounding the history of and historicization of sexuality, queer media, archival institutions and practice, art, experimental media, and pornography. His dissertation, “Autobiographical Archiving and Archival Excess: Kenneth Anger and the Kinsey Institute, 1947-2015” creates a parallel history of the avant-garde filmmaker’s tactics of collection alongside staff changes and shifts in archival logics at the sexological organization. In order to generate a logic of archival excess as a queer tactic, it also considers some of the contributions Anger has provided to other institutions such as the ONE Archives and the Museum of Death in Los Angeles. At the same time, the dissertation provides a sustained interrogation of the archival processes, tasks, and relationships that have framed the collections. In addition, Anthony is working on several other projects alongside the dissertation that concern the Kinsey Institute’s relationship with film organizations and distributors and the sexological valuation of film ephemera and art objects in the 1950s and 1960s.

Anthony currently serves as the Managing Editor of Film History: An International Journal. He was a recipient of the Kinsey Institute’s 2019 John Money Fellowship for Scholars of Sexology. He holds a position as the graduate student representative for the Experimental Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS). He has presented his work at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Annual Conference and Visible Evidence. He is currently a co-programmer for the Underground Film Series at I.U. Cinema.

Anthony received his M.A. in the Humanities from the University of Chicago in 2015, and his B.A. in Film Studies from the University of Pittsburgh in 2014.

Publications (Peer-Reviewed)

Anthony L. Silvestri, “Photo Blocks, Sex Dollar Bills, and Useless Packing Cushions: Kenneth Anger and the Kinsey Institute, 1947-2015,” provisionally accepted for publication in The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving-Image Archivists

Anthony L. Silvestri, “Kenneth Anger and the Filmed Archive Reenactment,” Journal of Film and Video 73, no. 4 (Winter 2021): 29-43.

Anthony L. Silvestri, “A Conflict Between the Token Guardians of Society and a Man’s Private Life: Kenneth Anger, Palo Alto Kodak, the Kinsey Institute, and the Circulation of Marvin Samuel’s Amateur S/M Pornography,” Porn Studies (January 13, 2021): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23268743.2020.1844590.

Chapters in Edited Collections (Peer-Reviewed)

Anthony L. Silvestri, “Sexology on Sixteen,” in 16mm at 100, eds. Haidee Wasson and Greg Waller (abstract accepted; forthcoming)

Anthony L. Silvestri,  “Kenneth Anger’s Sixties: Invocation of My Demon Brother, the Kinsey Archives, and the Farce of the ‘Hippie-Flower’ Child Phenomena” in Wounded Galaxies 1968: Film, eds. Joan Hawkins and Chris Dumas (abstract accepted; forthcoming)

Courses Taught as Instructor of Record

MSCH-A 315: Advertising and Consumer Culture

MSCH-F 375: Race, Gender and Representation in Media- American Cinema

MSCH-F 392: Media Genres – Horror

MSCH-P 331: Script Writing

Awards 

The John Money Fellowship for Scholars of Sexology, the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, 2019

Graduate Student Achievement Award for Best Research Paper: “Kenneth Anger and the Filmed Archive Reenactment,” Indiana University, 2019

Selected Service

Graduate Student Representative, Society for Cinema and Media Studies Experimental Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group, 2019-2022 (elected).

Institutional Voice Chair, Media School Graduate Association, 2021-2022 (elected).

Selection and Awards Committee, Montage: A Celebration of Moving Pictures, 2019 and 2020

Jury Member, InLight Human Rights Film Festival, 2019

Guest Lecturer, The Digital Cinema Academy at the Media School, 2018 and 2019

Film Programming

The Underground Film Series (Indiana University Cinema and the IULMIA Screening Room). Active Programming Member: 2018-present. Group leader: 2020-2021.

• Taka and Ako: The Iimuras’ Cine-Poetics (Short Film Program), January 27th, 2022
• Ken Jacobs on 16mm (Short Film Program), April 24th, 2020
• Media Distortions: The Avant-Garde and Mass Culture, January 22nd, 2020
• The Spiritual Avant-Garde (Short Film Program), October 4th, 2019
• Andy Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls, January 22nd, 2019

Social Guidance Sundays (I.U. Libraries Moving Image Archive)

• Santa’s Sack of 16mm Film and Fun, December 8th, 2019