William Greaves: Filmmaking as Mission (co-edited by Jacqueline Najuma Stewart). Columbia University Press, 2021. 460 pages.
This, the first book on prolific filmmaker William Greaves includes a meta-interview of Greaves, covering his life as songwriter, dancer, actor, teacher for the Actors Studio, and documentary filmmaker; interviews with Louise Greaves and David Greaves; writings by Greaves himself (several never before published), new essays by a range of scholars (Franklin Cason, Jr, Tsitsi Jaji, Joan Hawkins, Alexander Johnston, Katherine Kinney, Celeste Day Moore, J.J. Murphy, Charles Musser, Laura Isabel Serna, Patricia R. Zimmermann…), an extensive dossier on the Symbiopsychotaxiplasm films, a report on the Greaves archival holdings at the Schomburg Center for the Study of Black Culture, and the most complete filmography available at this time.
Flash Flaherty: Tales from a Film Seminar(co-edited with Patricia R. Zimmermann). Indiana University Press, 2021. 429 pages.
Flash Flaherty is a collection of 102, 1000-word essays by veterans of the annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, one of the oldest continually running nonprofit media arts institutions in the world. The essays are organized chronologically according to each writer’s first Flaherty, though in most cases seminarians have revisited the seminar more than once. The various “tales” combine to evoke both the many kinds of experiences Flaherty seminarians have had and the ways in which individual Flaherty programmers have understood the crucial cinematic issues of their programming years.
The Sublimity of Document: Cinema as Diorama (Avant-Doc 2). New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 522 pages.
The Sublimity of Document begins with a discussion of “document” versus “documentary,” and an overview of Carl Akeley’s contributions to the emergence of the diorama of animal life in museums of natural history—in order to create a context for a collection of in-depth interviews with moving-image artists working with a modern sense of cinema’s ability to document the world around us. These filmmakers are less interested in polemic, in using filmmaking to make political “arguments,” than in documenting what they feel we need to see in order to form our own sense of modern experience. Interviewees include Ron Fricke, Gustav Deutsch, Laura Poitras, Fred Wiseman (on Hospital), Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Bill Morrison, Brett Story, Abbas Kiarostami (on Five), Lois Patiño, Dominic Gagnon, Erin Espelie, Yance Ford (on Strong Island), Janet Biggs, Carlos Adriano, Craig Johnson, Ben Russell (on Good Luck), Betzy Bromberg, James Benning, the three executive directors of the distributor Documentary Educational Resources (Sue Cabezas, Cynthia Close, and Alice Apley), Maxim Pozdorovkin (on Our New President), and three veterans of Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab: J. P. Sniadecki, Stephanie Spray, Véréna Paravel (and Sniadecki’s collaborators, Libbie Dina Cohn, and Josh Bonnetta). The interviews are organized panoramically; each interview is introduced with an overview of the interviewee’s life and work. Filmographies and selected bibliographies.
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The Flaherty: Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017. 343 pages. (With Patricia R. Zimmermann)
The story of The Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, among the oldest continuously running nonprofit media arts institutions in the world, which has shaped the development of independent film, video, and emerging media forms in the United States over the past 60 years. Combining the words of legendary independent filmmakers with a detailed historical overview, the book showcases the seminar’s history and legacy, demonstrating how the relationships created at the annual Flaherty seminar have been instrumental in transforming American media history. Moving through the decades, each chapter opens with a detailed history of the organization by Zimmermann, tracing the evolution of The Flaherty from a private gathering of filmmakers, to a small annual convening, to today’s ever growing nexus of filmmakers, scholars, librarians, producers, funders, distributors, and others associated with international independent cinema. MacDonald expands each chapter by giving voice to the major figures in the evolution of independent media through carefully edited transcriptions of key discussions galvanized by films shown at the Flaherty. Featured in these discussions are Frances Flaherty, Robert Gardner, Fred Wiseman, Willard Van Dyke, Jim McBride, Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton, Erik Barnouw, Barbara Kopple, Ed Pincus, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Bruce Conner, Peter Watkins, Su Friedrich, Marlon Riggs, William Greaves, Ken Jacobs, Kazuo Hara, Mani Kaul, Craig Baldwin, Bahman Ghobadi, Eyal Sivan, Susana de Sousa Dias, Tariq Teguia, and many others.
Reviews: Gerald Peary in ArtsFuse (Boston, on-line): http://artsfuse.org/161721/book-review-the-flaherty-seminar-a-history-of-contention/; Genevieve Yue, “Unknown Continents: A Conversation with Patricia Zimmermann and Scott MacDonald, authors of The Flaherty: Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema,” Film Quarterly 71: no. 1 (Fall 2017): 104-110; Cynthia Close, “The Cinema Symposium: A New Book on the Groundbreaking Flaherty Film Seminar,” in Documentary (International Documentary Association): Summer 2017, on-line; Bill Stamets, “The Story of the Flaherty Seminar,” Jump Cut, April 26, 2018 [https://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/stametsFlaherty/index.html].
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Peter Hutton: Hudson River Filmmaker. Catskill, New York: Thomas Cole National Historic Site, 2016. 28 pages.
Catalog, in honor of the passing of Peter Hutton, produced in conjunction with a lecture and screening event on October 9, 2016.
Binghamton Babylon: Voices from the Cinema Department 1967-1977 (a nonfiction novel). Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015. 253 pages.
Binghamton Babylon documents one of the crucial creative adventures in the history of the academic study of cinema. The emergence of a Cinema Department at what was then the State University of New York at Binghamton (now Binghamton University) between 1967 and 1977 brought together a group of faculty (Larry Gottheim and Ken Jacobs, and video-art pioneer, Ralph Hocking; as well as Hollywood legend Nicholas Ray; such now-canonical independent filmmakers as Ernie Gehr, Peter Kubelka, and Saul Levine; and later, film scholar Maureen Turim) and students (film critic J. Hoberman and cultural critic Camille Paglia; dancers Arnie Zane and Bill T. Jones who founded the American Dance Asylum while in Binghamton; the Cinema Department graduates who founded New York’s Collective for Living Cinema; comics pioneer Art Spiegelman, and filmmakers Phil Solomon, Alan Berliner, and Daniel Eisenberg). This volatile mix of personalities produced an exciting campus scene, a remarkable body of films and videos; and graduates of the program have invigorated the American media scene for the past half-century. Binghamton Babylon is an oral history of the Cinema Department as remembered by faculty, students, and visiting artists, presented as a meta-conversation that explores the academic excitement of the moment when cinema became a viable academic subject in colleges and universities across the country.
Binghamton Babylon concludes with two appendices: “Pedagogical Cinema,” an analysis of the pedagogical dimensions of the films that were produced in Binghamton, among them, Gottheim’s Horizons; Jacobs’ Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son, Gehr’s Serene Velocity, Frampton’s Critical Mass, and Nick Ray’s final film, We Can’t Go Home Again; and the Spiegelman cartoon of a Jacobs lecture that inspired Maus.
Review: Film Comment, October 2015.
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Avant-Doc: Intersections of Documentary and Avant-Garde Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. 455 pages.
Avant-Doc begins with a conversation with Annette Michelson about what led to her early championing of documentary pioneer Dziga Vertov and avant-garde filmmakers Stan Brakhage, Yvonne Rainer, and Hollis Frampton in Artforum, followed by 22 in-depth interviews with filmmakers Robert Gardner, Ed Pincus, Alfred Guzzetti, Ross McElwee, Nina Davenport, Leonard Retel Helmrich, Michael Glawogger, Susana de Sousa Dias, Jonathan Caouette, Paweł Wojtasik; and with Amie Siegel on DDR/DDR; Alexander Olch, on The Windmill Movie; Arthur and Jennifer Smith on Ice Bears of the Beaufort; Betzy Bromberg, on Voluptuous Sleep; Jennifer Proctor, on A Movie by Jen Proctor; Jane Gillooly, on Suitcase of Love and Shame; Godfrey Reggio, on Visitors; and with Todd Haynes on his early faux documentary, Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story and how his early experiences with avant-garde filmmakers and experimental documentaries paved the way for the commercial anti-biopic I’m Not There. Avant-Doc concludes with a section on Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab: interviews with Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash on In and Out of Africa and Sweetgrass; with Castaing-Taylor, on his installation work and on “sensory ethnography”; with Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, on their Leviathan; and with Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez, on their Manakamana. Filmographies and selected bibliographies.
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American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary: The Cambridge Turn. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. 415 pages.
An exploration of the emergence and accomplishments of ethnographic filmmaking and personal documentary in Cambridge, Massachusetts—seen as two sides of the same cinematic coin, and framed by the history of Pragmatism as explored by William James and John Dewey. Discussions of the careers of John Marshall, Robert Gardner, Timothy Asch, Ed Pincus, Alfred Guzzetti, Ross McElwee, Robb Moss, Lucien Castaing-Taylor; and of particular works by Robert Fulton, Lorna Marshall, Naomi Weinstein, Richard Rogers, Ann Schaetzel, Ricky Leacock and Valerie Lelonde, Steve Ascher and Jeanne Jordan, Michel Negroponte, Nina Davenport, Lucia Small, John Gianvito, Jeff Daniel Silva, Ilisa Barbash, J.P. Sniadecki, Stephanie Spray, and Véréna Paraval.
Reviews: Cynthia Close, “The Documentary Dukes and Duchesses of Cambridge,” Documentary (Fall 2013: http://www.documentary.org/magazine/documentary-dukes-and-duchesses-cambridge); listed no.2 in Slant Magazine’s Ten Best Film Books of 2013: http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/the-10-best-film-studies-books-of-2013/P2.
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Adventures of Perception: Cinema as Exploration, Interviews/Essays. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. 427 pages.
Eight essays: “Desegrating Film History: Avant-Garde Film and Race at the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, and Beyond,” which argues that the terminology we use (“avant-garde film” “African-American film”) creates a form of cine-segregation that limits our understanding of both histories; “Poetry and Film: Avant-Garde Cinema as Publication,” a historical sketch of the uses of poetry in avant-garde cinema, followed by a focus on Rick Hancox’s Waterworx (A Clear Day and No Memories), Matthias Müller’s nebel, and Clive Holden’s Trains of Winnipeg; “Up Close and Political: Three Short Ruminations on Nature Film,” including conjectures on the distinctions between the Disney Studio’s True Life Adventures and Jean Painlevé’s nature films, on several films about the Sonoran Desert, and on the exemplary Microcosmos; “The Attractions of Nature in Early Cinema,” a review of early attempts to market the interest in Hudson River School painting; “Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket: The Single-Shot Film,” focusing on films by Robert Nelson, Larry Gottheim, Robert Huot, Alan Berliner, J. J. Murphy and Morgan Fisher; “The Mohawk Valley Journey to The Journey,” the story of the production of Peter Watkins’ meta-film; “Confessions of a Feminist Porn Watcher (Then and Now)” (Linda Williams calls this “the very best essay ever written about the uses of pornography”); and “Film History and ‘Film History,’” on writing about film versus showing film. Plus eight interviews, with filmmakers Gina Kim, Clive Holden, Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou, Peter Hutton, James Benning, David Gatten, George Kuchar; and director of New York’s Film Forum, Karen Cooper.
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Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. 462 pages.
A documentation of Canyon Cinema, the most dependable American distributor of avant-garde film, using documents from the Canyon files, interviews with important contributors to the history of Canyon (Edith Kramer, Diane Kitchen, Bruce Conner, and Dominic Angerame), and extensive essays, interviews, poems, drawings, polemics, cartoons, and other materials from forty years of the Canyon Cinemanews, by Bruce Baillie, Freude Bartlett, Stan Brakhage, James Broughton, Abigail Child, Commodore Sloat, Bruce Conner, Gary Doberman Hollis Frampton, Barbara Hammer, Henry Hills, Will Hindle, Larry Jordan, Jon Jost, George Kuchar, Saul Landau, John Lennon, Jackson Mac Low, George Manupelli, Gregory Markopoulos, Jonas Mekas, Gunvor Nelson, Robert Nelson, Yvonne Rainer, Peter Seaton, Warren Sonbert, Art Spiegelman, Chick Strand, and many others..
Review: Malcolm Turvey, “Rental History,” Artforum (July 2008): artforum.com/film/id=20775; Max Goldberg, “CC Riders,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, April 23, 2008: www.sfbg.com/.com/2008/04/23cc-riders
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Art in Cinema: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006. 308 pages. [hardback only]
A companion volume to Cinema 16: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society, Art in Cinema documents the history of Frank Stauffacher’s Art in Cinema San Francisco/Berkeley film society. The volume includes a general introduction, interviews with several of those who were involved with Art in Cinema (Jack Stauffacher, Jordan Belson, Barbara Stauffacher Solomon); and letters to and from Frank Stauffacher, by Kenneth Anger, James Broughton, Luis Buñuel, Jim Davis, Maya Deren, Oskar Fischinger, Francis Flaherty, Symon Gould, Curtis Harrington, Theodore Huff, Ian Hugo, Lewis Jacobs, Arthur Knight, Vincent Minnelli, Sidney Peterson, Hans Richter, Harry Smith, Willard Van Dyke, Amos Vogel, Fred Zinnemann, and others; selections from the program notes, and from the press reception of the film society’s activities, plus the complete programs announced by Art in Cinema. The volume includes a facsimile reprint of Art in Cinema, the catalogue published by the San Francisco Museum of Art (Art in Cinema’s sponsor), the first book on avant-garde cinema published in North America, with essays by Henry Miller, Hans Richter, Elie Faure, Man Ray, Luis Buñuel, John and James Whitney, Erich Pommer, Oskar Fischinger, Maya Deren, George Leite, and Paul Velguth.
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A Critical Cinema 5: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 452 pages.
Introductions to and in-depth interviews with Kenneth Anger, Tony Conrad (on the 1960s), Nathaniel Dorsky (and Jerome Hiler), Peggy Ahwesh, Alan Berliner, Robb Moss, Phil Solomon, James Benning, J. Leighton Pierce, Matthias Müller, Sharon Lockhart, Jennifer Todd Reeves, Kano Shiho, and Ernie Gehr. Filmographies/bibliographies.
A documentation of the history of Cinema 16, the most successful and influential film society in American history. The volume includes a general introduction; interviews with Amos Vogel, Marcia Vogel, and Jack Goelman (Amos’s co-programmer); selections from the letters Vogel exchanged with filmmakers and other programmers, including Lindsay Anderson, Kenneth Anger, Jordan Belson, Stan Brakhage, James Broughton, Luis Buñuel, Joseph Campbell, Joseph Cornell, Robert Flaherty, Gregory Markopoulos, Willard Maas, Harry Partch, Sidney Peterson, Jean Renoir, Hans Richter, Frank Stauffacher, George Stoney, Parker Tyler, Agnes Varda, Fred Zinnemann; plus conversations with Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, Carmen D’Avino, Ed Emshwiller, Robert Kelly, Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney, Cecile Starr, and Melvin Van Peebles. The book also includes writings by Vogel (including “Thirteen Confusions” and “The Eternal Subversion”), the transcript of “Poetry and the Film: A Symposium” (with Maya Deren, Willard Maas, Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, and Parker Tyler), selections from the Cinema 16 program notes, the complete Cinema 16 program announcements, and examples of the press reception of the film society’s activities.
Reviews: Anonymous, Film Comment (Jan.-Feb. 2002); Brian L. Frye, The Independent (July/August, 2003); Jan-Christopher Horak, The Moving Image (Fall 2003); Ara Osterweil, Film Quarterly (Fall 2003), Brian Frye, Millennium Film Journal, no. 42 (Fall 2004): http://mfj-online.org/journalPages/mfj42/fryepage.html.
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A Critical Cinema 4: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. 399 pages.
Introductions to and in-depth interviews with scholar/historian P. Adams Sitney, and filmmaker Stan Brakhage, Jill Godmilow (and Harun Farocki), Peter Kubelka, Jim McBride, Abigail Child, Chuck Workman, Chantal Akerman, Lawrence Brose, Peter Forgács, Shirin Neshat, and Ellen Spiro. Filmographies/bibliographies
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Cinema 16: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society. Temple University Press, 2002. 468 pages. [Substantial excerpt originally published as two special double issues of Wide Angle: 19, no. 1 (January 1997) and no. 2 (April 1997).]
A documentation of the history of Cinema 16, the most successful and influential film society in American history. The volume includes a general introduction; interviews with Amos Vogel, Marcia Vogel, and Jack Goelman (Amos’s co-programmer); selections from the letters Vogel exchanged with filmmakers and other programmers, including Lindsay Anderson, Kenneth Anger, Jordan Belson, Stan Brakhage, James Broughton, Luis Buñuel, Joseph Campbell, Joseph Cornell, Robert Flaherty, Gregory Markopoulos, Willard Maas, Harry Partch, Sidney Peterson, Jean Renoir, Hans Richter, Frank Stauffacher, George Stoney, Parker Tyler, Agnes Varda, Fred Zinnemann; plus conversations with Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, Carmen D’Avino, Ed Emshwiller, Robert Kelly, Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney, Cecile Starr, and Melvin Van Peebles. The book also includes writings by Vogel (including “Thirteen C
onfusions” and “The Eternal Subversion”), the transcript of “Poetry and the Film: A Symposium” (with Maya Deren, Willard Maas, Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, and Parker Tyler), selections from the Cinema 16 program notes, the complete Cinema 16 program announcements, and examples of the press reception of the film society’s activities.
Reviews: Anonymous, Film Comment (Jan.-Feb. 2002); Brian L. Frye, The Independent (July/August, 2003); Jan-Christopher Horak, The Moving Image (Fall 2003); Ara Osterweil, Film Quarterly (Fall 2003), Brian Frye, Millennium Film Journal, no. 42 (Fall 2004): http://mfj-online.org/journalPages/mfj42/fryepage.html.
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The Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films about Place. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. 461 pages.
Essays on the depiction of place in modern independent film and video—an attempt to demonstrate the relevance of alternative media to the academic fields of American Studies, Environmental Studies, and Art History. The first two chapters explore intersections between Hudson River School painting, particularly the paintings of Thomas Cole, and films by Larry Gottheim and J. J. Murphy; chapter 3, “Avant-Gardens,” is a panorama of diverse approaches to the idea of the “garden,” by Kenneth Anger, Marie Menken, Carolee Schneemann, Stan Brakhage, Marjorie Keller, Anne Charlotte Robertson, and Rose Lowder. Chapter 4, “Re-envisioning the American West,” explores films by Babette Mangolte (The Sky on Location), James Benning (North on Evers), Oliver Stone (Natural Born Killers), and Ellen Spiro (Roam Sweet Home); chapter 5, “From the Sublime to the Vernacular,” Jan DeBont’s Twister and George Kuchar’s Weather Diaries. “The City as Motion Picture,” chapter 6, focuses on the cine-history of the New York City Symphony (including Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing), as well as the tradition of city films in San Francisco (including Bruce Baillie’s Castro Street and Ernie Gehr’s Side/Walk/Shuttle), and instances of city films about Philadelphia and LA (Pat O’Neill’s Water and Power). “The Country in the City,” chapter 7, focuses on Jonas Mekas’s Walden and William Greaves’ Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One; “Rural (and Urban) Hours,” chapter 8, on the filmmaking relationship between Hollis Frampton and Robert Huot, on Nathaniel Dorsky’s Hours for Jerome and Peter Hutton’s Landscape (for Manon) and New York Portrait, Part 1. “Expulsion from the Garden,” chapter 9, returns to Thomas Cole paintings as a context for commentary on Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, Carl Franklin’s One False Move, and J. J. Murphy’s Print Generation and Horicon. The final chapters, Satan’s National Park” and “Benedictions/New Frontiers,” focus on horrors in the landscape (Bruce Conner’s Crossroads, Werner Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness, Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, James Bennings Deseret and Four Corners); and on attempts to find spiritual regeneration via cinema (Chick Strand’s Kristallnacht, Stan Brakhage’s Commingled Containers, Andrew Noren’s Imaginary Light, Leighton Pierce’s 50 Feet of String, and David Gatten’s What the Water Said, nos. 1-3.
Reviews: Belinda Baldwin, The Independent (March, 2002); M. Yacowar, Choice (April, 2002); Stephen Rees, Library Journal (April, 2002); Jason Livingston, Afterimage (May, 2002); Todd Fisher, ISLE (Winter, 2003); Brian Henderson, Film Quarterly (Fall, 2004).
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A Critical Cinema 3: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 481 pages.
Introductions of and interviews with scholar/exhibitor Amos Vogel, and filmmakers Jordan Belson, William Greaves, Arthur Peleshian, Charles Burnett, Hara Kazuo, Peter Watkins, Ken Jacobs, Aline Mare, Nick Deocampo, Mani Kaul, Craig Baldwin, Gunvor Nelson, Christine Choy, Rose Lowder, Peter Hutton, Valie Export, Patrick Bokanowski, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, Elias Merhige, Cauleen Smith, John Porter, Raphael Montanez Ortiz, Martin Arnold, and Sally Potter. Filmographies/bibliographies.
Review: James Deutsch, American Studies International (October, 1988).
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Screen Writings: Scripts and Texts by Independent Filmmakers. University of California Press, 1995. 339 pages.
A collection of scripts and texts for independent films, including the mini-scripts of Yoko Ono; Hollis Frampton’s texts for Poetic Justice and Gloria!, and his notes for Zorns Lemma; program notes and an excerpt from the text of William Greaves’ Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One; Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s script for Riddles of the Sphinx; the original James Benning script “New York (1980)”; Peter Rose’s text for Secondary Currents and Michael Snow’s text for So Is This; the texts for Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Reassemblage and Naked Spaces—Living Is Round; Su Friedrich’s dream texts from Gently Down the Stream and the script for Sink or Swim; Morgan Fisher’s text for Standard Gauge; Ann Marie Fleming’s text for You Take Care Now and a transcript of New Shoes: An Interview in Exactly Five Minutes; and Yvonne Rainer’s script for Privilege.
Reviews: Patricia Zimmermann, “The X-Files,” The Independent (August/September 1995); Michael Fox, San Francisco Weekly (May 1995); Films in Review (1995).
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Avant-Garde Film/Motion Studies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 199 pages.
A general introduction to contemporary independent film, using Eadweard Muybridge’s motion study photographs and the Lumiere Brothers’ single-shot films as a ground against which to figure fifteen films: Yoko Ono’s No. 4 (Bottoms), Michael Snow’s Wavelength, Ernie Gehr’s Serene Velocity, J. J. Murphy’s Print Generation, Morgan Fisher’s Standard Gauge, Hollis Frampton’s Zorns Lemma, Laura
Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s Riddles of the Sphinx, James Benning’s American Dreams, Su Friedrich’s The Ties That Bind, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi’s From the Pole to the Equator, Warren Sonbert’s The Carriage Trade, Godfrey Reggio’s Powaqqatsi, Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Naked Spaces—Living Is Round, Yvonne Rainer’s Journeys from Berlin/1971, and Peter Watkins’ The Journey. In second printing.
Reviews: William C. Wees, Film Quarterly (Spring, 1994), p. 51; American Library Association (Choice) (September 1993).
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A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. 462 pages.
Introductions of and interviews with Robert Breer, Michael Snow, Jonas Mekas, Bruce Baillie, Yoko Ono, Anthony McCall, Andrew Noren, Anne Robertson, James Benning, Lizzie Borden, Ross McElwee, Su Friedrich, Anne Severson, Laura Mulvey, Yvonne Rainer, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Godfrey Reggio, Peter Watkins.
Reviews: Publisher’s Weekly (August, 1992); Barbara Kopple, Culturefront (Summer, 1993); Eva-Marie Worth, Blimp (Austria) (Spring 1994).
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A Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. 410 pages.
Introductions of and interviews with Hollis Frampton, Larry Gottheim, Robert Huot, Taka Iimura, Carolee Schneemann, Tom Chomont, J. J. Murphy, Vivienne Dick, Beth B and Scott B, John Waters, Bruce Conner, Robert Nelson, Babette Mangolte, George Kuchar, Diana Barrie, Manuel DeLanda, and Morgan Fisher.
Reviews: J. Hoberman, Premiere (November 1989); Robert Sabal, Journal of Film and Video (Winter 1989); John Conomos, Cinema Papers (Australia) (November 1991); Cantrills Filmnotes (Australia) (May 1990). Selections from the introduction reprinted in Off Hollywood (Venice: Marsilio, 1991) in conjunction with the 27th Pesaro Film Festival.
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Critical Essays on Erskine Caldwell. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981. 400 pages.
General introduction, selected reviews of Caldwell’s writings as they were published; selected newspaper articles by Caldwell, selected critical essays on Caldwell’s work.
Reviews: American Literary Scholarship: An Annual/1981, p. 269 (“This volume is really a model of its kind”); John L. Idol, Jr., Studies in Short Fiction (Winter 1982).
Scott MacDonald with Erskine Caldwell, Circa 1981