Presentation: OPUS (N)ONE

Explore the fascinating world of OPUS ONE (1966 - late 1990s), a groundbreaking record label that fused visionary music with dazzling, black-light-reactive album art, in this multimedia presentation.

In 1966, a frustrated composer in the Maine woods founded a record label to release experimental, electronic, and other independently-minded records with psychedelic fluorescent covers, in small pressings practically guaranteed to lose money. Somehow the label survived for forty years, putting out hundreds of crucial recordings by unique artists such as Frederic Rzewski, the Blackearth Percussion Group, Ruth Norman, Bulent Arel, Peter Garland and Barre Phillips. 

OPUS (N)ONE is an audiovisual performance reclaiming the importance of this label (named Opus One) through audio samples of some of its sonic highlights and eye-popping presentation of its blacklight-friendly covers, stickers and inserts, augmented by a personal narration by a city slicker whose voyage to a rural and remote corner of the country reconfigured his understanding of how avant-garde communities can survive in a hostile landscape.

Brian Darr worked part-time at SFPL for 10 years before moving into the academic library sphere, first at City College of San Francisco and, since moving to Maine in 2021, Thomas College and Bowdoin College. He has written on media history for outlets such as Senses of Cinema, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, SFGate, Screen Slate, and The Maine Playweek. He's performed several audiovisual presentations at San Francisco's Other Cinema showcase, including WRONG NUMBERS (2019) and RED DELICIOUS (2018) on blacklisted filmmakers Abraham Polonsky and Jules Dassin.

Kerry Laitala, originally from Brunswick, Maine, returned to her home state after a career as an award-winning experimental filmmaker and projector-performance practitioner and teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute. She's currently working on several film projects.