CAYCE’s 2nd YEAR MFA CLASS AT SFSU, 1998

Front row: Ron Toole, Michael Massing, Jan Millsapps, Jamie Meltzer, Iseya
Back row: Jennifer Hammett, Kristin Cato, CAYCE LINDNER, Luci Kwak, Angie Leonino, Baptiste

I will remember Cayce as a daring and enthusiastic filmmaker whose energy and enthusiasm for creative thought and activity never waned. In our 2nd year MFA class, participants were encouraged to challenge their knowledge of cinema and to take their work in a new direction. In the photo above, we are all pretending (or not) to be bored by conventional films.

Early in the semester, Cayce and his pal Jamie Meltzer set out to make a feature film in two weeks using only a Fisher-Price toy video camera – and did it (actually, I think it came in at just under an hour, but impressive nonetheless).

For his final project, Cayce created “History of the Anderson Transfer,” an installation featuring a room housing the invented video archive of an invented 16-year-old boy who has his own invented historian.

This is how Cayce (writing as the Anderson historian) described the project:

"… an exploration of the personal videotape collection of a 16-year-old boy. By using the video format as the centerpiece of this installation, which allows the participant to look around the boy's room and sift through his tape collection and other possessions, Lindner has attempted to refocus cinema narratives, forms and gazes to reflect a life that mystically inhabits a media format. David Anderson's videotape collection is not only an archive of family texts, narrative films and personal events, but a book of dreams, an archive of fantasy. This videotaped world has bled into David's actual surroundings, blurring the boundaries between fantasy and reality.”

Still from “History of the Anderson Transfer”

Brilliantly conceived and deeply engaging, Cayce’s 2nd year project was presented at SFSU and also at the Mill Valley Film Festival.

I also found the bio Cayce wrote for himself during the class:

“Cayce Lindner studied film and literary theory at the University of Oregon. He is currently writing screenplays and country/western music and has recently started a small record company. His first year MFA film, "Somewhere in a Sad Song," explored his central concerns of obsession, desire and American popular culture. He would like a rural life with his wife and children somewhere along the United Shuttle west coast corridor. His kids will go to college on Hollywood money.”

Cayce’s thesis film was one of the best to ever come out of the SFSU’s MFA program. I loved the expansive way his brain worked and the unconventional methods he used to translate his ideas into pictures and sounds.

He kept in touch. I last heard from him in a January 25 email whose subject was, “Saying hello, from Cayce Lindner.” And now I have to say goodbye to Cayce Lindner, but his incredible filmography will endure as a powerful indicator of the person he was. I am comforted by the memories of Cayce I retain and I am honored to have been a small part of his artistic life.

Jan Millsapps
Professor of Cinema, SFSU