Madeline Tourtelot

Madeline Tourtelot (21 November 1915 – 26 May 2002) was an American filmmaker based out of the Chicago metropolitan area.

Biography Born in Alameda, California

Career Tourtelot's met John Steinbeck and Emilio Fernández in 1947 while studying painting in Mexico. Steinbeck and Fernandez were working on the film version of Steinbeck's 1947 novel "The Pearl" and invited Tourtelot to help with production. Her experience with Steinbeck and Fernandez inspired the start to her career as a filmmaker.

Tourtelot went on to become a significant contributor to Chicago's art scene and avant-garde filmmaking in the 1950s and 1960. She completed two films; Reflections and One by One (featuring music by Ed Bland) in 1955, as well as a series of short commissioned films set to classical music for Chicago's Educational channel in 1956.

In 1957, Tourtelot met American composer Harry Partch through Robert Kostka, who was the art director at WTTW-TV in Chicago. Partch needed a filmmaker for a script he'd rewritten called U.S. Highball, and Kostka thought Tourtelot's filmmaking aesthetic would be in line with Partch's vision for the film. In 1958, she produced Windsong with Partch, the first of a number of collaborations between the two and the only film in which she acted. Other works include Rhythm on Canvas (1955), Reflections (1955), One by One (1955), and U.S. Highball (1968).

In addition to her visual arts practice, Tourtelot founded three art institutions: the Ephraim Art School (1943), the Gallery Studio in Chicago's North Michigan Avenue arts district (1950s), and the Door Harbor School of Art (1965), now known as the Peninsula School of Art, where she was the school's director until 1971. She was also a long-standing member of Cinema 16, an influential membership film society in New York City, and a critic for Films in Review and Chicago American, in which her writing often revealed her own aesthetic preferences. Harry Partch (music) The Poets Return 1962 Paul Severson (music) Harry Partch (music)