P. Adams Sitney: Visionary Film: the American Avant-Garde, 1943-2000 (1974–)

“Visionary Film has remained the standard text on the American avant-garde since the publication of its first edition in 1974. It has been hailed as the most complete work written on the exciting, often puzzling and always controversial genre of American avant-garde film. In this book P. Adams Sitney discusses the principle genres and the major filmmakers since Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid made their dreamlike film “Meshes of the Afternoon” in 1943. Sitney also identifies the emergence and flowering of a new genre, which he calls Menippean Satire. This edition also includes a chapter on the films of Gregory J. Markopoulos which had been dropped from the second edition.”

First published as Visionary Film: the American Avant-Garde, Oxford University Press, 1974.

Second edition
Visionary Film: the American Avant-Garde, 1943-1978
Publisher Oxford University Press, 1979
xiv+463 pages

Third edition
Visionary Film: the American Avant-Garde, 1943-2000
Publisher Oxford University Press, 2002
ISBN 019514886X, 9780195148862
xvi+462 pages

Publisher

2nd edition: PDF (73 MB, added on 2020-9-18)
3rd edition: PDF, EPUB (updated on 2019-11-15)

See also Sitney’s Eyes Upside Down: Visionary Filmmakers and the Heritage of Emerson, 2008.

P. Adams Sitney: Eyes Upside Down: Visionary Filmmakers and the Heritage of Emerson (2008)

“Sitney analyzes in detail the work of eleven American avant-garde filmmakers as heirs to the aesthetics of exhilaration and innovative vision articulated by Ralph Waldo Emerson and explored by John Cage and Gertrude Stein. The films discussed span the sixty years since the Second World War. With three chapters each devoted to Stan Brakhage and Robert Beavers, two each to Hollis Frampton and Jonas Mekas, and single chapters on Marie Menken, Ian Hugo, Andrew Noren, Warren Sonbert, Su Friedrich, Ernie Gehr, and Abigail Child, Eyes Upside Down is the fruit of Sitney’s lifelong study of visionary aspirations of the American avant-garde cinema. Sitney’s earlier book and critical essays defined the field of serious criticism of the American film avant-garde. He supplies a unique approach, critical, formal and intellectual, rather than sociological, ideological or institutional. Like his earlier book, Eyes Upside Down is a dense, sustained blast of convincing criticism which unfolds through a compelling personal vision. It makes a serious contribution to cinema studies and it is sure to remain in circulation for many years to come.”

Publisher Oxford University Press, 2008
ISBN 0195331141, 9780195331141
xiv+417+[32] pages

Publisher
Worldcat

PDF (updated on 2019-11-15)

See also Sitney’s Visionary Film: the American Avant-Garde, 1943-2000, 1974/2002.

A. L. Rees: A History of Experimental Film and Video: From Canonical Avant-garde to Contemporary British Practice (1999)

“Avant-garde film is almost indefinable. It is in a constant state of change and redefinition. In this book A.L. Rees tracks the movement of the film avant-garde between, on the one hand, the cinema, and, on the other hand, modern art (with its post-modern coda). But he also reconstitutes the film avant-garde as an independent form of art practice with its own internal logic and aesthetic discourse.

This is the first major history of avant-garde film and video to be published in more than twenty years. Ranging from Cezanne and dada, via Cocteau, Brakhage and Le Grice, to the new wave of British video artists in the 90s, this remarkable study will introduce a generation of new readers to avant-garde film as well as provoking students and specialists to further reflection and debate.”

Publisher BFI Publishing, London, 1999
ISBN 0851706843, 9780851706849
viii+152+[32] pages

Interview with author: LUX (2011).

Reviews: Felicity Sparrow (Vertigo, 1999), Alexander Graf (MedienWissenschaft, 2000), Felicity J Colman (Viewfinder, c.2011).

Publisher (2nd ed.)
WorldCat

PDF (4 MB, updated on 2021-2-8 via esco_bar)