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Paul Arthur's new book collects his essays on avant-garde film from the past thirty years into a single volume. This book is a much needed survey of American work since 1965 that was written at the time of the events being discussed, rather than a historicizing volume written from a singular contemporary viewpoint.
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What is especially good about this book is the mixture of approaches that gives the book a shifting view of the work covered, and allows a degree of internal dialogue between different essays. Of particular interest are the later chapters covering more recent developments, a critical look at the present that is common in other arts, but too often lacking with movies.
The Appendix may prove to be the most important section in what is clearly an important book. It collects distribution and screening information on a number of well-known movies, allowing an analysis of the social networks that are too-often ignored when avant-garde film is studied as an art form. The general availability of such a database creates new opportunites for critical study and examination.
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