OCCUPATION: Super 8 Filmmaker/Impresario, founder of the Emerald Reels Super 8 Lounge.

Do you only work in Super 8 film?

Well, inevitably you have to transfer Super 8 to video, to get it shown, but I always start with Super 8. But I just do Super 8 'cause I own the equipment, I can do it all in my house, and no one can tell me I can't do it.

Tell us about Emerald Reels.

What I like to do is to get well-known filmmakers like Martha Colburn, or Anne Robertson--who has shown at MOMA--and put them right up there with people who've never made a film before. People see a film and then see another film that's at a different level, and they realize the possibility of what you can do. It sort of lays out the highway of where you can go. This last year I got films from these people who the previous year had been just spectators--they had been inspired enough to want to make something.

Does that mean these first films are bad?

You know, even the Sex Pistols, after a couple of years, learned to play their instruments. I look at the people involved, and we're all getting better... everybody's work is getting better, more complicated.

You have music too, right?

The thing about Emerald Reels that's made it successful, I think, is the DJ thing. If you go see DJs, almost universally, the visuals suck. Here, the visuals are not for the DJ, the DJ is for the visuals. When you combine that talent, what DJs can do with cutting, splicing, and putting together, and you put that together with experimental film... apparently, people really like it.

How would you characterize the local film community?

I think it's wrong to think of the film community as exclusive from the music community, or the theater community. People who have an alternative, experimental aesthetic--they cross those boundaries; you find your allies in music, in dance. There are a lot of musicians here who are not just interested in being Britney Spears, you know.

A lot of people might look at Seattle and claim that, while we watch a lot of films, we don't make a lot of films.

Well, that's a good thing, because... the wave hasn't crested yet. It's only now rising. We've got a long way to go, which is great.

Do you have a social agenda?

No. Just living here, in this town, and continuing to hang out and live, and drink, and make films.