54 years before designer John Storyk designed The Mark screening room at Upstate Films’ Orpheum Theater, he was a recent architectural school grad and was enlisted by Jimi Hendrix to work on Electric Lady Studios. It was the first such commercial enterprise owned by a recording artist. This new doc explores the stop-start year spent designing and building it, making for a rich oral history containing tantalizing asides. Electric Lady Studios proposed that a studio have the ambience and aesthetics of a club, a place where you could entertain as well as work — an idea that Hendrix welcomed and ran with. Electric Lady was the corrective to the institutional blankness of commercial studios. “Jimi’s spirit is still there,” says Eddie Kramer, the recording engineer who was a key partner in Hendrix’s sonic innovation and his studio venture, and a central figure in the film. (dir. John McDermott, 2024, USA, 90 min.)
The CLOSE UP series is generously underwritten by Rob Dyson, Barbara Huseby, Sara Arno, Wendy & Heidi Ettinger, and Matt Davidson on behalf of the late Joan K. Davidson/Kaplan Fund. This screening is supported by Winifred Marion.
Upstate Films programs are made possible by Arts Mid Hudson, Dutchess Tourism, and support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.