story © Michael Betancourt | published January 30, 2015 | permalink |  |  

There are lots of histories published about US avant-garde film. Here's an extended list of some of them, arranged in order of publication year:

Frank Stauffacher and Richard Foster, Art in Cinema (catalog, 1946)

Lewis Jacobs, “Experimental Cinema in America 1921-1947” in The Rise of the American Film (1948)

Roger Manvell, Experiment in the Film (1949)

Robert Pike, A Critical Study of the West Coast Experimental Film Movement (UCLA dissertation, 1960)

Gregory Battcock, The New American Cinema (1967)

Sheldon Renan, An Introduction to the American Underground Film (1967)

Parker Tyler, The Underground Film: A Critical History (1968)

Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema (1970)

P. Adams Sitney, ed., Film Culture Reader (1970)

David Curtis, Experimental Cinema (1971)

Annette Michelson, Artforum: Structural Film (special issue), September 1971

Jonas Mekas, Movie Journal (1972)

Dennis Wheeler, ed., Form and Structure in Recent Film (1972)

John Hanhardt, A History of the American Avant-Garde Cinema (1976)

Annette Michelson, New Forms in Film. Montreux, August 3/24 1974 (catalog, 1974)

P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film (1974)

P. Adams Sitney, ed. The Essential Cinema: Essays on the Films in the Collection of the Anthology Film Archives (1975)

Standish Lawder, The Cubist Cinema (1975)

Stephen Dwoskin, Film Is: The International Free Cinema (1975)

Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art (1976)

Robert Russett & Cecile Starr, Experimental Animation (1977)

Malcolm Le Grice, Abstract Film and Beyond (1977)

Maureen Turim, Abstraction in Avant-Garde Films (1978/85)

Dominique Noguez, Une renaissance du cinéma: le cinéma "underground" américain (1985, reprinted 2002)

David Schwartz, Independent America: New Film 1978-1988 (catalog) (1988)

David E. James, Allegories of Cinema (1989)

Stan Brakhage, Film at Wit’s End (1989)

Lauren Rabinovitz, Points of Resistance: Women, Power, and Politics in the New York Avant-garde Cinema, 1943-71 (1989, 2003)

Patricia Mellencamp, Indiscretions: Avant-Garde Film, Video, & Feminism (1990)

William Wees, Light Moving in Time: Studies in the Visual Aesthetics of Avant-Garde Film (1992)

David James, To Free the Cinema: Jonas Mekas and the NY Underground (1992)

Bart Testa, Back and Forth: Early Cinema and the Avant-Garde (1992)

Scott MacDonald, Avant-Garde Film Motion Studies (1993)

William C. Wees, Recycled Images (1993)

James Peterson, Dreams of Chaos, Visions of Order (1994)

Robert Haller, First Light: Abstract Light Forms (1998)

Jan-Christopher Horak, Lovers of Cinema: The First American Film Avant-Garde, 1919-1945 (1998)

Joan Hawkins, Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde (2000)

Bruce Posner, Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1893-1941 (2001)

Bill Nichols, Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde (2001)

Scott MacDonald, The Garden in the Machine. A Field Guide to Independent Films About Place (2001)

Chrissie Iles, Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art 1964-1977 (2001)

David E. James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles (2005)

Jeffrey Skoller, Shadows, Specters, Shards: Making History in Avant-Garde Film (2005)

Paul Arthur, Line of Sight: American Avant-Garde Film Since 1965 (2005)

Clayton Patterson, Captured: A Film & Video History of the Lower East Side (2005)

Robert Haller, Crossroads: Avant-Garde film in Pittsburgh in the 1970s (2005)

Jackie Hatfield, ed., Experimental Film and Video (2006)

Alexander Graf, ed., Avant-Garde Film (Avant-Garde Critical Studies 23) (2007)

Robin Blaetz, Women’s Experimental Cinema: Critical Frameworks (2007)

P. Adams Sitney, vEyes Upside Down (2008)

Woody Vasulka and Peter Weibel, eds., Buffalo Heads: Media Study, Media Practice, Media Pioneers, 1973–1990 (2008)

Steve Anker, et al, Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000 (2010)

Dominique Noguez, Eloge du cinéma expérimental (3rd ed., 2010)

A. L. Rees, A History of Experimental Film and Video (2011)

A. L. Rees, et al, Expanded Cinema: Art, Performance, Film (2011)

Adeline Coffinier & Victor Gresard, Film Culture Index 1955-1996 (2012)

Erika Balsom, Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art (2013)

Michael Betancourt, The History of Motion Graphics: From Avant-Garde to Industry in the United States

Mark Webber, ed., Film as Film: The Collected Writings of Gregory Markopolous (2014)