Wheeler Winston Dixon is the Ryan Professor of Film Studies, Professor of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and Editor in Chief of the Quarterly Review and Film and Video. Dixon teaches courses in film history, theory and criticism at UNL from the undergraduate to the graduate levels, as well as advising students. During the 1960s he worked as an experimental filmmaker in New York, then moved to Los Angeles and London in the late 60s and early 70s to work within the film industry. He left Hollywood in 1976 after a career as a post-production supervisor to pursue a career in academe.
On April 11-12, 2003, Dixon was honored with a retrospective of his films at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and his films were acquired for the permanent collection of the Museum, in both print and original format.
Since 1999, Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster have served as Editors-in-Chief of the distinguished journal of film criticism, The Quarterly Review of Film and Video. Dixon is also on the editorial board of the journal Film Criticism. Dixon was a member of the editorial board of Cinema Journal from 2000-2003; he now serves as a member of the Executive Council of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, through 2007.
Dixon received his Ph.D. in English from Rutgers University in 1982, and is the author or editor of numerous books.
His newest books are A Short History of Film (co-authored with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster; Rutgers University Press, 2008); Film Talk (Rutgers University Press, 2007) Visions of Paradise (Rutgers University Press, 2006); American Cinema of the 1940s: Themes and Variations, a volume in the series American Decades, American Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2006); Lost in The Fifties: Recovering Phantom Hollywood (Southern Illinois Press, 2005); Film and Television After 9/11 (Southern Illinois University Press, 2004); Visions of the Apocalypse: Spectacles of Destruction in American Cinema (Wallflower Press, 2003), Straight: Constructions of Heterosexuality in the Cinema (State University of New York Press, 2003), Experimental Cinema: The Film Reader (Routledge, 2002) Collected Interviews: Voices from Twentieth-Century Cinema (Southern Illinois University Press, 2001), The Second Century of Cinema: The Past and Future of the Moving Image (State University of New York Press, 2000) and Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays (State University of New York Press, 2000).
Dixon's other recent books include Disaster and Memory: Celebrity Culture and the Crisis of Hollywood Cinema (Columbia University Press, 1999); The Exploding Eye: A Re-Visionary History of the American Experimental Cinema (State University of New York Press, 1997), on 1960s American experimental filmmakers; The Films of Jean-Luc Godard (State University of New York Press, 1997), on the life and works of the noted French filmmaker; and The Transparency of Spectacle: Meditations on the Moving Image (State University of New York Press Series in Postmodern Culture, 1998), on the impact of changing technologies (especially computer generated imagery and digital technology) in cinema and television.
Dixon has also written the books Re-Viewing British Cinema: 1900-1992 (1994), from State University of New York Press, a critical anthology on the history of the British film; It Looks at You: Notes on the Returned Gaze of Cinema (1995), also from SUNY UP, on recent developments in interactive cinema; and The Early Film Criticism of François Truffaut (Indiana University Press, 1993).
As editor of the State University of New York Press Cultural Studies in Cinema / Video Series from 1995 to 2005, Dixon created a new group of books on cinema/video theory and practice that have redefined the field. Published volumes include: Celluloid Nationalism and Other Melodramas: From Post-Revolutionary Mexico to fin de siglo Mexamérica by Susan Dever (2003); Shakespeare in the Cinema: Ocular Proof by Stephen Buhler (2001); Dead Ringers: The Remake in Theory and Practice, edited by Jennifer Forrest and Leonard R. Koos, eds. (2001); Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls: Gender in the Film at the End of the Twentieth Century, edited by Murray Pomerance (2001); Production Theory of the Hollywood Cinema by Jean-Pierre Geuens (2000); Structures of Desire: Cultural Change in British Cinema 1940-1955 by Tony Williams (2000); The Films of Fred Zinnemann: Critical Perspectives, edited by Arthur Nolletti, Jr. (1999); The Cinema of Tony Richardson by James M. Welsh and John C. Tibbets (1999); Captive Bodies: Postcolonial Subjectivity in the Cinema by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster; The Phantom of the Cinema by Lloyd Michaels (1998); Living Pictures: Origins of the Motion Picture by Deac Rossell (1998); The Folklore of Consensus: Theatricality in the Italian Commercial Cinema 1930-1943 by Marcia Landy (1998); Triangulated Visions: Women in Recent German Cinema, edited by Ingeborg Majer O'Sickey and Ingeborg Von Zadow (1998; in conjunction with the SUNY series on Feminist Criticism and Theory, Michelle A. Massé, editor); Redirecting the Gaze: Gender, Theory and Cinema in the Third World, edited by Diana Robin and Ira Jaffe (1998); and PostNegritude Visual and Literary Culture by Mark A. Reid (1997). Dixon retied the series in 2005 to concentrate on his own work, but the final titles in the series will continue through 2006.
Dixon is also the author of numerous articles on film theory, history and criticism, along with numerous book and video reviews, which have appeared in Cinema Jounral, Cinéaste, Interview, Film Quarterly, Literature/Film Quarterly, Films in Review, Post Script, Journal of Film and Video, Film Criticism, New Orleans Review, Classic Images, Film and Philosophy and numerous other journals. He also has reviewed films for the All Movie Guide website, as well as contributing on a regular basis to the web journal Senses of Cinema.
He has also created the liner notes and/or jacket copy for a number of DVDs of classic films, including Mike Newell's The Good Father (1985), Barbet Schroeder's More (1970), Claude Chabrol's Story of Women (1988), Bo Widerberg's All Things Fair (1995), Joseph Losey's Time Without Pity (1957), and Jonathan Miller's 1966 version of Alice in Wonderland for Homevision Entertainment, as well as writing jacket copy for numerous other Homevision releases from 2003 through 2005.
Dixon's published articles include:
"The Power of Resistance: Les Dames de Bois du Boulogne," Senses of Cinema 46 (Spring, 2008), at <http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/08/46/dames-du-bois-de-boulogne.html>; "Fast Worker: the Films of Sam Newfield," Senses of Cinema 45 (2007), at <http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/07/45/sam-newfield.html>; "Hyperconsumption in Reality Television: The Transformation of the Self Through Televisual Consumerism," Quarterly Review of Film and Video 25.1 (2008): 52-63; "Vanishing Point: The Last Days of Film," Senses of Cinema 43 (2007) , at <http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/07/43/last-days-film.html>; "Bennett Miller: An Interview," Post Script 26.1 (Fall 2006): 3-12; "A Cinema of Violence: The Films of D. Ross Lederman," Film Criticism 30.3 (Spring, 2006): 38-65; "Mike Leigh, Topsy-Turvy and The Excavation of Memory," Senses of Cinema 37 (2005), at <http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/05/37/topsy_turvy.html>; "Filmmaking 'For the Fun of It': An Interview with Jack Hill," Film Criticism 29.3 (Spring 2005): 46-59;"An Interview with Monte Hellman," Quarterly Review of Film and Video 22.3 (2005): 263-275;"An Interview with Takashi Shimizu," (with Shoichi Gregory Kamei, translator), Quarterly Review of Film and Video 22.1 (January-March 2005): 1-16;"The Golden Years: An Interview with Ronald Neame," Post Script 23.2 (Winter /Spring 2004): 3 -18;"Teaching Film After 9/11," Cinema Journal 43.2 (Winter 2004): 115-118;"The Three Film Versions of The Great Gatsby: A Vision Deferred," Literature /Film Quarterly 31.3 (2003): 287-294;"In Praise of Godard's In Praise of Love," Film Criticism 27.2 (Spring 2003): 18-39; "A Conversation with Albert Maysles," Quarterly Review of Film and Video 20.3 (2003): 177-192;"The Man Who Set The Earth on Fire: An Interview with Val Guest," Classic Images 333 (March 2003): 70-74;"Budd Boetticher: The Last Interview," Film Criticism 26.3 (Spring 2002): 52-72;"Robert Downey, Sr.: The Preston Sturges of the 1960s," Popular Culture Review 13.1 (January 2002): 69-76;"No More Excuses: An Interview with Robert Downey Sr.," Post Script 21.1 (Fall 2001): 3-13."Robert Downey, Sr.: The Preston Sturges of the 1960s," Popular Culture Review 13.1 (January 2002); "No More Excuses: An Interview with Robert Downey Sr.," Post Script 21.1 (Fall 2001); "An Interview with Jamie Babbit," Post Script 21.1 (Fall 2001); "British Film Comedy In the New Millennium: Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, and Guest House Paradiso," Popular Culture Review 12.1 (February 2001); "Compromise and Triumph: The Films of Paul Robeson," Classic Images 305 (November 2000); "The New Horizon of the Moving Image: Digital Production in the 21st Century," Popular Culture Review 11.2 (Summer 2000); "John O'Shea and the Tradition of the New Zealand Feature Cinema," Popular Culture Review (February 2000) 11.1; "The Portable Opera Comes of Age: Philip Glass's Monsters of Grace," Popular Culture Review 10.2 (August 1999): 33-42, "The Man Who Created The Avengers: An Interview with Brian Clemens," Classic Images 287 (May 1999), "When I'm 63: An Interview with Jonathan Miller," Popular Culture Review 10.1 (February 1999), "Performativity in 1960s American Experimental Cinema: The Body as Site of Ritual and Display," Film Criticism 23.1 (Fall 1998), "The Invisible Man, Secret Agent, and The Prisoner: Three British Teleseries of the 1950s and 60s," Classic Images 282 (December 1998), "The Colonial Vision of Edgar Wallace," Journal of Popular Culture 32. 1 (Summer 1998), "The Auteur as Elegist: Richard Carlson's Riders to the Stars, Popular Culture Review 9.2 (August, 1998), and "For Ever Godard: Notes on Godard's For Ever Mozart," Literature /Film Quarterly 26.2 (1998).
Dixon has also served as a Guest Film Programmer at The National Film Theatre of the British Film Institute in London as a lecturer, in addition to creating seasons of film programs on Dystopian Science Fiction films and the films of Terence Fisher, as well as conducting an on-stage interview with the late two-time Academy Award-winning director and cinematographer Freddie Francis.
As a film and video maker, Dixon's feature and short films include "What Can I Do?," "Serial Metaphysics," "Squatters," "The Warm Midwestern Bedroom Does Not Matter," "The DC 5 Memorial Film," "Quick Constant and Solid Instant," "Numen Lumen," "An Evening with Chris Jangaard" and many other films. In January of 2004, his films were digitally remastered at NETV, Nebraska, and preserved in Digibeta format. These Digibeta masters now are archived at The Museum of Modern Art, along with the rest of Dixon's film originals. He has served as a juror for The Southwest Alternate Media Project and The National Student Academy Awards, and has received numerous grants and fellowships, including grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, The Royal Film Archive of Belgium, and The Layman Foundation.
Dixon's films and videotapes have also been screened at The Museum of Modern Art (New York; 2 shows in 1994), Anthology Cinema Archives (New York, 1993), The Museum of the Moving Image of the British Film Institute (London; 1994), The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York; 2 shows), The Jewish Museum (New York), The San Francisco Cinématheque, The Collective for Living Cinema (New York), The Kitchen Center for Experimental Art (New York), The Nelson-Atkins Museum (Kansas City), The Mary Riepma Ross Film Theatre (Lincoln), The Filmmakers Cinématheque (New York), and The New Arts Lab (London).
In the Fall of 1997, Dixon delivered four lectures at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, to celebrate the publication of his book The Exploding Eye: A Revisionary History of 1960s American Experimental Cinema, in conjunction with a series of screenings of classic experimental films which he curated for the occasion. In the summer of 1997, he delivered ten lectures at The New School for Social Research in the Summer of 1997 between June 16 and July 15, exploring the impact of changing technology on film and video production. On May 24, 1997, Dixon was honored with a retrospective of his work at The Millennium Film Workshop in New York City. On June 27th, 1997, he delivered two lectures in Lincoln Center at The Walter Reade Theatre in New York at the premiere of the restored CinemaScope version of Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 masterpiece, Le Mépris.
A complete list of Dixon's publications can be found in the Modern Language Association International Bibliography, available on CD-ROM, or as an Internet database.