David Blair (filmmaker)

David Blair is a motion picture artist, currently working with electricity. His first feature, the 1991 cult hit Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees, was a funded with public arts grants, and a co-production with ZDF, German Television. After European broadcast, a 16mm print opened theatrically to excellent reviews at the Public Theater in New York, and then copies of that print played cinemas in 26 U.S. cities, further copying themselves for later theatrical play in Japan and Australia. Blair performs in the film. On May 23rd, 1993, a VHS copy of Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees was the first film streamed across the Internet, with the New York Times declaring it an “historic event."[1] Also in 1993, the text/image/movie online version of the film Waxweb, was one of the first sites on the World Wide Web.

In 2020, Blair began to release the sequel to “ Wax…” in the form of an encylopedic motion picture, in multiple reel-volumes. The first segment, “The First Movie On The Internet, Volumes ABCD” is a 6 hour film that serves as the Prologue. “Volume E” [2020] is a 32 hour version of “Wax…” . “Volume F” [2020] is a 26 hour version of Volumes ABCD. “Volume G” [2021] is a 26 hour film that takes place in Manchuria in the 1930s.

Blair presented earlier versions of this encyclopedic film in art contexts, most notably with a 5 room, 20 channel installation at the Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp in 2013. [9]