Peter Gidal (ed.): Structural Film Anthology (1976/1978)

“This anthology of texts about what have been termed Structural Films attempts to bring together some of the more important essays and articles on those films which have formed the core of film work in this field since its inception. It is a first attempt to bring together texts from Europe, Britain and the United States. In the past we have been inundated with the parochial, American view of avant-garde film work, as expounded on both sides of the Atlantic. This anthology was published to coincide with the series of eighteen programmes, Structural Film Retrospective, at the National Film Theatre, London, in May 1976.

As it happened, no film-maker was included in the programmes who had not produced relevant work before 1971, though many works were from after that year. No new films were introduced; this was a retrospective programme intended to enable a viewing that saw each film in the context of each other film, that could recognise alliances and misalliances between films, that could attempt to deal with the individual filmworks and the critical practice which preceded or followed.

In some cases, the critical practice here is a virtually complete repression through ideology of the text of the film; in the gaps presented work can now take place. The lengths of the sections are dictated by the materials of interest available, and unfortunately in a few cases only very slight material existed. I hope that the selection will not offend; the younger Americans have been left out, as have many of the younger British, because of the wish for a solid retrospective programme as elucidated above. No doubt there are quite a few film-makers completely unknown to me, and to nearly everyone else, who have done and may be doing very important work, and whose work remains ‘out of view’ for a variety of sociological reasons, none of which are praiseworthy. I wish to thank all the film-makers and writers, obviously.

For this reprint nothing has been changed, though a few minor errors have been corrected and Ben Brewster’s review of the Anthology inScreen has been included as an afterward. I call attention to the ‘Theory and Definition of Structural/Materialist Film’ article in its original form in Studio International (November 1975), and to Deke Dusinberre’s article relating to it in Screen (Summer 1977). P.G., January 1978” (Introduction)

With an introduction by Peter Gidal
Publisher British Film Institute, London, 1976; reprint from 1978
ISBN 0 85170 0535
144 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-7-14)

Elizabeth Legge: Michael Snow: Wavelength (2009)

“In 1966 Michael Snow made the film Wavelength, a masterful exploration of the nature of perception. Throughout the film’s forty-five minutes, the camera slowly zooms from one end of a New York City loft space to its far wall, accompanied by the sound of a rising sine wave.

In this critical study, Elizabeth Legge describes Wavelength as a film of expertly managed tensions, sensuous beauty, subtle light and colour and recession into perspectival depth. Wavelength was crucial to critics’ efforts to establish a vocabulary for the experimental film movement emerging a the time, and has functioned ever since as a blue screen in front of which a range of ideological and intellectual dramas have been played.”

Publisher Afterall Books, 2009
One Work series
ISBN 1846380561, 9781846380563
112 pages

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PDF (updated on 2020-7-13)

David E. James (ed.): Stan Brakhage: Filmmaker (2005)

“Stan Brakhage: Filmmaker is a collection of essays, photographs, personal statements, and reminiscences about the celebrated avant-garde filmmaker who died in 2003. The director of nearly four hundred short films, including Dog Star Man, Parts I-IV, and the Roman Numeral Series, Brakhage is widely recognized as one of the great artists of the medium. His shorts eschewed traditional narrative structure, and his innovations in fast cutting, hand-held camerawork, and multiple superimpositions created an unprecedentedly rich texture of images that provided the vocabulary for the explosion of independent filmmaking in the 1960s.

Stan Brakhage: Filmmaker chronicles both the director’s personal and formal development. The essays in this book—by historians, filmmakers, and other artists—assess Brakhage’s contributions to the aesthetic and political history of filmmaking, from his emergence on the film scene and the establishment of his reputation, to the early-1980s. The result is a remarkable tribute to this lyrical, visionary artist.”

Publisher Temple University Press, 2005
Wide Angle Books series
ISBN 1592132723, 9781592132720
240 pages

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