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NYU DEPARTMENT OF CINEMA STUDIES

Avant-Garde Reading List (updated 02/14/2013)

Note: Texts in foreign languages are recommended, not required.

Alea, Thomas Gutierrez. The Viewers Dialectic, in 3 parts at www.ejumpcut.org

Anker, Steve et alia. Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

Arthur, Paul. A Line of Sight : American Avant-Garde Film since 1965. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota
Press, 2005.

__________ . "Springing Tired Chains: Experimental Film and Video." In: Struggles for representation: African
American documentary film and video, edited by Phyllis R. Klotman and Janet K. Cutler. pp: 268-97.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

Bayma, Todd. "Art World Culture and Institutional Choices: The Case of Experimental Film." Sociological
Quarterly v36, n1 (Winter, 1995).

Beauvais, Yann and Jean-Michel Bouhours. Monter / Sampler. Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2000.

Bellows, Andy Masaki et al. Science is Fiction: the Films of Jean Painlev. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000.

Blaetz, Robin. "Avant-garde cinema of the Seventies." In: Lost illusions : American cinema in the shadow of
Watergate and Vietnam, 1970-1979 by David A. Cook. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2002.

Blaetz, Robin, ed. Women's experimental cinema : critical frameworks. Durham : Duke University Press, 2007.

Bouhours, Jean-Michel et al. To Hernandez: Trois gouttes de mezcal dans une coupe de champagne.
Paris: Centre Pompidou, 1997.

Bouhours, Jean-Michel and Roger Horrocks, eds. Len Lye. Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2000.

Brakhage, Stan. Metaphors on Vision; edited with an introduction by P. Adams Sitney. [s.l.: s.n.], 1963.

____________ . Film at Wit's End: Eight Avant-garde Filmmakers 1st ed. Kingston, N.Y.: Documentext, 1989.

Burger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Camper, Fred. "The End of Avant-Garde Film," Millennium Film Journal, Nos.16/17/18, pp.99-124

Christie, Ian. "The Avant-Gardes and European Cinema before 1930." In: The Oxford guide to film studies,
edited by John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, pp: 449-54. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Cornwell, Regina. "Some formalist tendencies in the current American avant-garde film." Studio v 184 Oct
1972. p. 110-14

Curtis, David. Experimental Cinema: A Fifty Year Evolution. London, Studio Vista, 1971.

Dalle Vacche, Angela and Brian Price, eds. Color: The Film Reader. London: Routledge, 2006.
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Dixon, Wheeler W. The Exploding Eye: A Re-visionary History of 1960s American Experimental Cinema
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997).

___________ .. "Performativity in the 1960s American Experimental Cinema: The Body as Site of Ritual and
Display." Film Criticism. 23(1):48-60. 1998 Fall.

Dixon Wheeler, and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, eds. Experimental Cinema: The Film Reader. New York :
Routledge, 2002.

Dobson, Terence. The Film Work of Norman McLaren. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

Douglas, Stan and Christopher Eamon. Art of Projection. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2009.

Dwoskin, Stephen. Film is ...: The International Free Cinema. London: Owen, 1975.

Elder, Bruce. Body of vision: representations of the body in recent film and poetry Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid
Laurier University Press, 1997.

Elder, Bruce. Harmony and Dissent: Film and Avant-Garde Art Movements in the Early Twentieth Century.
Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008.

Frampton, Hollis. Circles of Confusion: Film Photography Video, Texts 1963-1980. Rochester: Visual
Studies Workshop Press, 1983.

Fuller, Greg S. ""Unquiet years": experimental cinema in the 1950s." In: Transforming the screen, 1950-1959,
ed., Peter Lev. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003.

Gidal, Peter. Andy Warhol: Films and Paintings. New York: Dutton Pictureback, 1971.

__________ . "Avant-Garde: The Anti-Narrative (1978)." Screen 1979 20: 73-93

__________ . Materialist Film. New York: Routledge, 1989.

Gidal, Peter, ed. Structural Film Anthology. London: British Film Institute, 1976.

Graf, Alexander and Dietrich Scheunemann. Avant-garde film. New York: Rodopi, 2007.

Gunning, Tom. "The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde." Wide Angle, vol. 8
no. 3-4. 1986. pp: 63-70.

Hall, Doug and Sally Jo Fifer, eds. Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art. New York:
Aperture in assocation with the Bay Area Video Coalition, 1990.

Hamlyn, Nicky. Film art phenomena. London : BFI Pub., 2003.

Hammond, Paul. ed., The Shadow and its Shadow: Surrealist Writings on Cinema, revised edition. San
Francisco: City Lights, 2001. [1978].

Hanhardt, John G. "Film image/electronic image: the construction of abstraction, 1960-1990." Visible
Language v 29 no2 [1995]. p. 138-59.

Harvey, Sylvia. May 68 and Film Culture. rev. edition. London: BFI, 1980.

Hatfield, J. "Expanded Cinema and Its Relationship to the Avant-Garde: Some Reasons for a Review of the
Avant-Garde Debates Around Narrativity." Millennium Film Journal no. 39/40 (Winter 2003) p. 50-65.
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Hatfield, Jackie, ed. Experimental Fim and Video: An Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

Hatfield, Jackie, ed. Experimental film and video : an anthology. Eastleigh, UK : John Libbey Pub., 2006.

Hawkins, Joan. Cutting edge: art-horror and the horrific avant-garde. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2000.

Hoberman, J. "How to read an avant-garde film." American Film v 6 Jan/Feb 1981. p. 56-8.

__________ . "Three myths of avant-garde film." Film Comment v 17 May/June 1981. p. 34-5

__________ . "After avant-garde film." In: Art after modernism: rethinking representation, edited and with an
introduction by Brian Wallis; foreword by Marcia Tucker. p. 59-73. New York: New Museum of Contemporary
Art; Boston: D.R. Godine, 1984.

Hollein, Max and Esther Schlicht, eds. Zelluloid: Cameraless Film. Bielefeld: Christof Kerber Verlag, 2011.

Horak, Jan-Christopher, ed. Lovers of Cinema: The First American Film Avant-garde, 1919-1945. Madison,
Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.

Horrocks, Roger. Art That Moves: The Work of Len Lye. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2009.

Hubbard, J. "Introduction: A Short, Personal History of Lesbian and Gay Experimental Cinema." Millennium
Film Journal no. 41 (Fall 2003) p. 5-12.

Igliori, Paoli. American Magus: Harry Smith. New York: Inanout Press, 1996.

Jacobs, Lewis. The Rise of the American Film, A Critical History. With an essay: Experimental Cinema in
America, 1921-1947. New York, Teachers College Press, 1968.

James, David E. Allegories of Cinema: American Film in the Sixties. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1989.

______________ The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinema in Los Angeles.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

James, David, ed. To Free the Cinema: Jonas Mekas & the New York Underground. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1992.

James, David, ed. Stan Brakhage : filmmaker. Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2005.

Joseph, Brandon W. Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage. New York: Zone
Books, 2008.

Kuenzli, Rudolf, ed. Dada and Surrealist Film. New York: Willis, Locker & Owens, 1987.

Lawder, Standish, ed. The Cubist Cinema. New York: New York University Press, 1975.

Le Grice, Malcolm. Abstract Film and Beyond. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977).

____________ . Experimental cinema in the digital age. London: BFI Pub., 2001.

Lehman, Peter. "For Whom Does the Light Shine? Thoughts on the Avant-Garde." Wide Angle. 7 (1-2):68-73.
1985.

Leslie, Esther. Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory, and the Avant-Garde. London & NY: Verso,
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2004.

MacDonald, Scott. Avant-garde Film: Motion Studies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

____________ . The Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Film about Place. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001.

____________ . "Experimental cinema in the 1980s." In: Stephen Prince. A new pot of gold : Hollywood under
the electronic rainbow, 1980-1989. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2002.

___________. Adventures of Perception: Cinema as Exploration. Berkeley: University of California Press,

MacDonald, Scott. ed. A Critical Cinema 5 : interviews with independent filmmakers Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2006.

___________, ed. Cinema 16: Documents toward a History of the Film Society. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2002.

___________ ed. A Critical Cinema 4 : interviews with independent filmmakers. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2005.

___________, ed. A Critical Cinema 3: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. Berkeley; London: University
of California Press, 1998.

_____________, ed. A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992.

_____________, ed. A Critical Cinema 1: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1988.

Macrae, David. "Painterly Concepts and Filmic Objects: The Interaction of Expression and Re-Production in
Early Avant-Garde Film." In: European avant-garde: new perspectives: Avantgarde, Avantgardekritik,
Avantgardeforschung / edited by Dietrich Scheunemann. pp: 137-54. Amsterdam; Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2000

Manvell, Roger. Experiment in the Film. London: Grey Walls Press, 1949.

McCabe, Susan. Cinematic modernism : modernist poetry and film. New York: Cambridge University Press,
2005.

Meigh-Andrews, Chris. A History of Video Art: The Development of Form and Function. New York: Berg,
2006.

Mekas, Jonas. Movie Journal; The Rise of the New American Cinema, 1959-1971. New York, Macmillan, 1972.

Mellencamp, Patricia. Indiscretions: Avant-garde Film, Video & Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1990.

Michelson, Annette, ed., Hollis Frampton, special issue of October, no. 35 (1985)

Mitry, Jean. Le Cinma Exprimental. Paris: Seghers, 2000 [1974].

Moritz, William. Optical Poetry: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2004.

Mueller, Roswitha, ed., "German Avant-Garde Cinema: The Seventies," Discourse: Journal for Theoretical
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Studies in Media and Culture vol. 6. 1983 Fall.

Rombes, Nicholas, ed. New punk cinema. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2005.

Rieser, Martin and Andrea Zapp, eds. New screen media : cinema/art/narrative. London: BFI Pub., 2002.

Nichols, Bill. "Documentary Film and the Modernist Avant-Garde." Critical Inquiry. 27(4):580-610. 2001
Summer

Nichols, Bill, ed. Maya Deren and the American avant-garde. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2001.

Noguez, Dominique. Une renaissance du cinma: le cinma amricain underground. Paris: Klinksieck,
1985)

___________ . Le cinma autrement, revised edition. Paris: le Cerf, 1987 [1977].

__________ . loge du cinma exprimental. revised edition. Paris: Paris experimental, 2000 [1979].

O'Pray, Michael. Avant-garde film : forms, themes and passions. New York: Wallflower, 2003.

__________. "Modernism, Phantasy and Avant-Garde Film Wallflower." In: The Undercut Reader: Critical
Writings on Artist's Film and Video. Danino, Nina (ed. and introd.); Maziere, Michael. pp: 31-34. (ed. and
introd.). Wallflower. London, England;

Perchuck, Andrew and Rani Singh, eds. Harry Smith: The Avant-Garde in the American Vernacular. Los
Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2010.

Peterson, James. Dreams of Chaos, Visions of Order: Understanding the American Avant-garde Cinema.
Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994.

Petrolle, Jean and Virginia Wright Wexman, eds. Women and experimental filmmaking. Urbana : University of
Illinois, 2005.

Pickowicz, Paul and Yingjin Zhang, eds. From underground to independent : alternative film culture in
contemporary China. Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.

Rabinovitz, Lauren. Points of Resistance: Women, Power & Politics in the New York Avant-garde Cinema,
1943-71. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

Rainer, Yvonne with Ruby Rich et al. The Films of Yvonne Rainer. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1989

Rees, A. L. A History of Experimental Film and Video: From Canonical Avant-garde to Contemporary British
Practice. London: BFI Publishing, 1999.

Renan, Sheldon. An Introduction to the American Underground Film. [1st ed.]. New York, Dutton, 1967.

Rodowick, David. The Crisis of Political Modernism: Criticism and Ideology in Contemporary Film Criticism.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Rosenbaum, Jonathan. Film: The Front Line, 1983 Denver, Colo.: Arden Press, 1983.

Rowe, Carel. The Baudelarian Cinema: A Trend Within the American Avant-garde. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI
Research Press, 1982.
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Russell, Catherine. Experimental ethnography: the work of film in the age of video Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 1999.

Sargeant, Jack. Naked lens: an illustrated history of beat cinema. London: Creation Books, 2001).

Schwartz, David. "Visions of New York: Films from the 1960s Underground." In: Underground U.S.A.:
Filmmaking Beyond the Hollywood Canon. Mendik, Xavier (ed. and introd.); Schneider, Steven Jay (ed. and
introd.); Kaufman, Lloyd (foreword).pp: 201-03

Sitney, P. Adams. "Image and Title in Avant-Garde Cinema." October, Vol. 11, Essays in Honor of Jay Leyda.
(Winter, 1979), pp. 97-112.

___________ . Modernist Montage: The Obscurity of Vision in Cinema and Literature. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1990.

__________ . Visionary film: the American avant-garde, 1943-2000 / P. Adams Sitney. 3rd ed. Oxford; New
York: Oxford University Press, 2002 (new edition).

_____________, ed. The Avant-garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism. New York: NYU Press, 1978.

Sklar, Robert. "The cinematic avant-garde." In: A world history of film New York : Harry N. Abrams, 2002.

Skoller, Jeffrey. Shadows, specters, shards : making history in avant-garde film Minneapolis : University of
Minnesota Press, 2005.

Small, Edward S. Direct Theory: Experimental Film/Video as Major Genre. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1994.

Smith, Murray. "Modernism and the Avant-Gardes." In: The Oxford guide to film studies / edited by John Hill
and Pamela Church Gibson; consultant editors, Richard Dyer, E. Ann Kaplan, Paul Willemen. pp: 395-412.
Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Stam, Robert. The Hour of the Furnaces and the Two Avant-Gardes, Millenium Film Journal, nos. 7/8/9
(Fall/Winter 1980-81): 151-64 (also in Julianne Burton, ed. The Social Documentary in Latin America, 1990).

_________ . On the Margins: Brazilian Avant-Garde Cinema, in Randal Johnson and Robert Stam, eds.
Brazilian Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, pp. 306-27

Stauffacher, Frank, ed. Art in Cinema: A Symposium on the Avant-garde Film Together with Program Notes
and References for Series one of Art in Cinema. [1st ed.] . San Francisco: Art in Cinema Society, 1947.

Sterritt, David. "Challenging the eye: three avant-garde imagemakers." In: Guiltless pleasures : a David
Sterritt film reader. 1st ed. Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2005.

___________ . Mad to be saved: the Beats, the '50s, and film. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
1998.

Suarez, Juan Antonio. Bike Boys, Drag Queens & Superstars: Avant-garde, Mass Culture, and Gay Identities
in the 1960s Underground Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.

Sussman, Elisabeth et al, eds. On the Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time:
The Situationist International, 1957-1972. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989.

Thompson, Kristin. "Dr. Caligari at the Folies-Bergere: Or, The Successes of an Early Avant-Garde Film." In:
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Texts, Contexts, Histories. / edited by Mike Budd. pp: 121-69. New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1990.
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Tsivian, Yuri. Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2005.

Turim, Maureen Cheryn. Abstraction in Avant-garde Films. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1985.

Turvey, Malcolm. Jacobs, Ken. Michelson, Annette. Arthur, Paul. Frye, Brian. Iles, Chrissie. "Round Table:
Obsolescence and American Avant-Garde Film." October. 100((Special Issue)):115-32. 2002 Spring

Tyler, Parker. Underground Film; A Critical History. New York, Grove Press, 1970.

Uroskie, Andrew V. Beyond the Black Box: The Lettrist Cinema of Disjunction. October 135 (Winter 2011):
21-48.

Walley, Jonathan. "The Material of Film and the Idea of Cinema: Contrasting Practices in Sixties and
Seventies Avant-Garde Film." October. 103:15-30. 2003 Winter

Walsh, Martin. The Brechtian aspect of radical cinema London: BFI Pub., 1981.

Wees, William C. Light Moving in Time: Studies in the Visual Aesthetics of Avant-garde Film (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992).

_____________ . "Carrying On: Leslie Thornton, Su Friedrich, Abigail Child and American Avant-Garde Film of
the Eighties." Canadian Journal of Film Studies/Revue Canadienne D'Etudes Cinematographiques. 10 (1): 70-95.
2001 Spring.

____________. "The Ambiguous Aura of Hollywood Stars in Avant-Garde Found-Footage Films." Cinema
Journal. 41(2):3-18. 2002

Weibel, Peter and Gergor Jansen, eds. Light Art From Artificial Light: Light as a Medium in 20th and 21st
Century Art. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2006.

Weiss, Allen S. Film (special issue) Art & Text #34 (1989)

____________ . Formations of Subjectivity and Sexual Identity. in Allen S. Weiss, Perverse Desire and the
Ambiguouis Icon. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994, pp. 73-97.

Williams, Linda. Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1981.

Williamson, Judith. "Two Kinds of Otherness: Black Film and the Avant-Garde." In: Black British Cultural
Studies: A Reader / edited by Houston A. Baker, Jr., Manthia Diawara, and Ruth H. Lindeborg. pp: 173-82.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Willis, Holly. New digital cinema : reinventing the moving image. London: Wallflower Press, 2005.

Wollen, Peter. Readings and Writings: Semiotic Counter-Strategies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1997.

Xavier, Ismail. Aesthetics of Underdevelopment: Aesthetics and Politics in Modern Brazilian Cinema.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Youngblood, Gene. Expanded Cinema. Introd. by R. Buckminster Fuller. [1st ed.]. New York, Dutton, 1970.

In addition, please consult Film Culture (entire run) and Millenium Film Journal (entire run)
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PhDComprehensiveExam

HistoryoftheInternationalAvantGarde

Spring2008

1. Most experimental film has been made according to what has been termed the "artisanal mode of
production". What is this? What advantages does it have over studio production? Please refer to at
least 3 films and 3 critical texts in support of your answer.

2. It has been said that video led to the demise of experimental cinema. Do you agree? Why or why not?
Please refer to at least 3 films or video works and 3 critical texts in support of your answer.

3. In what ways have the aesthetics of sound, rather than (or in dialectical relation to) the aesthetics of the
image, played a role in the development of avant-garde film theory and practice? Please refer to at least
3 films and 3 critical texts in support of your answer.

4. With reference to at least three distinct phases or movements of the avant-garde, as represented by the
filmography and bibliography you have studied, discuss the importance of historyas trope, as material
effect, as context, or otherwisein experimental film practice.

5. In The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Rosalind Krauss writes: "The
functioning of the index in the art of the present operates to substitute the registration of sheer physical
presence for the more highly articulated language of aesthetic conventions (and the kind of history
which they encode)." How might one apply this proposition, which Krauss articulates primarily in relation
to painting and photography, to modes of indexicality in structuralist film? Your answer should discuss
the work of two filmmakers who, in your opinion, illustrate both the possibilities, and limits, of Krauss's
formulation for film analysis.

6. Write an essay discussing uses of "found footage" in avant-garde film and video, situating such work
historically and aesthetically in relation to the use of found materials in other visual and sonic arts.
Please refer to at least 3 films and 3 critical texts in support of your answer.