Scott MacDonald
Education:
Ph.D. University of Florida March 1970
M.A. University of Florida June 1966
B.A. DePauw University June 1964
Employment:
Hamilton College / Professor of Film / fall, 1981-present
Colgate University / NEH Professor of Humanities / spring 2011
Harvard University / Visiting Professor of Film / fall, 2007, spring 2009, fall 2012
Bard College / Visiting Professor of Film / fall, 2000-2004
University of Arizona / Visiting Scholar / spring, 2000
Utica College of Syracuse University / Professor Emeritus, 1999
Professor of English and Film, 11/79 to 6/99
Associate Professor of English and Film, 11/75-11/79
Assistant Professor of English and Film, 9/71-10/75
Grants/Awards/Honors:
Interviewed for Field Notes: a Society for Cinema & Media Studies project “to conduct, circulate and archive interviews with pioneers of film and media studies”
Academy of Motion Picture of Arts and Sciences Academy Scholar, 2012
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Independent Scholars, 2004
Anthology Film Archives Film Preservation Award, 1998
Utica College Student Life Outstanding Faculty Award, 1998
Utica College Women’s Center Ally for Women’s Empowerment Award, 1998
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers, 1993
Utica College Alumni Association Outstanding Faculty Award, 1993
Utica College Clark Award for Outstanding Scholarship and Professional Development, 1993
Utica College Distinguished Teaching Award, 1981
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, 1981
Publications: Books, monographs, issues of journals:
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). Oxford University Press, 2019. 546 pages.
The Sublimity of Document: Cinema as Diorama is a collection of in-depth interviews with moving-image artists making films that explore the territory between documentary and experimental cinema, including Ron Fricke, Gustav Deutsch, Laura Poitras, Fred Wiseman, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Bill Morrison, Brett Story, Abbas Kiarostami, Lois Patiño, Dominic Gagnon, Erin Espelie, Yance Ford, Janet Biggs, Carlos Adriano, Craig Johnson, Ben Russell, Betzy Bromberg, James Benning, Maxim Pozdorovkin, along with several veterans of Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab. The interviews are organized panoramically within the collection, and hopefully offer a complex engagement with the recent history and geography of cinema devoted to documenting the world around us, as well as an in-depth look at the challenges and accomplishments of filmmakers willing to go anywhere on the planet (or within the history of moving image media) to document what they believe we need to see. Review in Documentary: on-line: https://www.documentary.org/online-feature/sublimity-document-exploring-space-between-docs-and-avant-garde; review by Kornelia Boczkowska, “Avant-Doc 2 Challenges Cinema Studies to Be Useful (Again),”Papers on Language and Literature: 57, no.1 (Winter, 2021): 103-06: file:///Users/smacdona/Documents/SUBLIMITYcopyeditedMS/SUBLIMITYPPLreview.pdf
The Flaherty: Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema (co-written with Patricia R. Zimmermann). Indiana University Press, 2017. 343 pages.
The Flaherty intercuts between two kinds of history relating to the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, one of the oldest continually running nonprofit media arts institutions in the world: a traditional institutional history written by Patricia R. Zimmermann, is braided with my selection and edit of crucial big-group discussions (the big-group discussions have always been the heart of the Flaherty experience.
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]; Susan Ryan, “The Flaherty…,” in Cineaste 44, no. 4 (Fall 2019): 75-76.
Binghamton Babylon: Voices from the Cinema Department, 1967-1977 (a nonfiction novel). Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015. 254 pages.
Introduction and 10-year meta-conversation among SUNY-Binghamton (now Binghamton University) faculty, students, and visiting artists about their experiences with the Cinema Department during the volatile decade when cinema studies arrived in the academy. The Voices in the conversation include Larry Gottheim, Camille Paglia, Ken Jacobs, Ernie Gehr, Ralph Hocking, Sherry Miller Hocking, J. Hoberman, Steve Anker, Bill T. Jones, Peter Kubelka, Dan Barnett, Saul Levine, Morgan Fisher, Dan Eisenberg, Hollis Frampton, Susan Ray, Tony Conrad, Richard Herskowitz, Phil Solomon, Alan Berliner, Peer Bode, Maureen Turim, and the founders of the Collective for Living Cinema. Appendices: “A Pedagogical Cinema” by the author; and Ken Jacobs by Art Spiegelman. Review: Film Comment, October 2015.
Avant-Doc, Intersections of Documentary and Avant-Garde Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 455 pages.
Introductions and interviews with Annette Michelson, Robert Gardner, Ed Pincus (and Jane Pincus and Lucia Small), Alfred Guzzetti, Ross McElwee, Nina Davenport, Leonard Retel Helmrich, Jonathan Caouette, Paweł Wojtasik, Michael Glawogger, Susana de Sousa Dias, 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), Todd Haynes, and “Sensory Ethnograpy” filmmakers Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Ilisa Barbash, Véréna Paravel, Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez; filmography, bibliography.
American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary: The Cambridge Turn. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. 415 pages.
An exploration of documentary filmmaking in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Discussions of the careers (and in some instances relevant portions of careers) of John Marshall, Robert Gardner, Timothy Asch, Ed Pincus, Alfred Guzzetti, Ross McElwee, Robb Moss, Lucien Castaing-Taylor; plus 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. The volume sees developments in Cambridge framed by the emergence of Pragmatism.
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”; “Poetry and Film: Avant-Garde Cinema as Publication”; “Up Close and Political: Three Short Ruminations on Nature Film”; “The Attractions of Nature in Early Cinema”; “Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket: The Single-Shot Film”; “The Mohawk Valley Journey to The Journey”; “Confessions of a Feminist Porn Watcher (Then and Now)”; “Film History and ‘Film History’”; and eight interviews, with Gina Kim, Clive Holden, Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou, Peter Hutton, James Benning, David Gatten, George Kuchar, and Karen Cooper.
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, and extensive essays, interviews, poems, drawings, polemics, cartoons, and other materials from forty years of the Canyon Cinemanews. Reviews: Malcolm Turvey, “Rental History,” Artforum (July 2008).
Art in Cinema: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006. 308 pages.
A documentation of Art in Cinema, one of the most successful and influential film societies in American history. The volume includes a general introduction, interviews with several of those who were involved with Art in Cinema; letters Frank Stauffacher, director of Art in Cinema, and others exchanged with filmmakers and other programmers, 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 and a facsimile reprint of Art in Cinema, a 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.
A Critical Cinema 5: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 452 pages.
Introductions to and interviews with Kenneth Anger, Tony Conrad, Nathaniel Dorsky, Peggy Ahwesh, Alan Berliner, Robb Moss, Phil Solomon, James Benning, J. Leighton Pierce, Matthias Müller, Sharon Lockhart, Jennifer Todd Reeves, Kano Shiho, Ernie Gehr. Filmographies/bibliographies.
A Critical Cinema 4: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. University of California Press, 2004. 399 pages.
Introductions to and interviews with P. Adams Sitney, Stan Brakhage, Jill Godmilow (and Harun Farocki), Peter Kubelka, Jim McBride, Abigail Child, Chuck Workman, Chantal Akerman, Lawrence Brose, Peter Forgács, Shirin Neshat, Ellen Spiro. Filmographies/bibliographies.
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: vol. 19, no. 1 (January 1997) and no. 2 (April 1997).
A documentation 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; selections from the letters Vogel exchanged with filmmakers and other programmers, from the Cinema 16 program notes, and from the press reception of the film society’s activities; and the complete Cinema 16 program announcements. 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).
The Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films about Place. University of California Press, 2001. 461 pages.
Essays on the depiction of place in modern independent film and video. A central goal of this book is to demonstrate the relevance of alternative media to the academic fields of American Studies, Environmental Studies, and Art History, by revealing links between developments in American cultural history and particular independent films and videos. 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).
A Critical Cinema 3: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. University of California Press, 1998. 481 pages.
Introductions of and interviews with Amos Vogel, 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).
Movies Before Cinema, Parts 1 and 2. Two special issues of Wide Angle: vol. 18, no. 2 (April 1996) and no. 3 (July 1996).
A collection of essays on aspects of the motion picture before the advent of modern cinema. I edited both issues and contributed an introduction, the essay “Voyages of Life,” and a book review.
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; 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. Review: Patricia Zimmermann, “The X-Files,” The Independent (August/September 1995); Michael Fox, San Francisco Weekly (May 1995); Films in Review (1995).
Avant-Garde Film/Motion Studies. 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 background against which to consider 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).
A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. University of California, 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 Wakins. Reviews: Publisher’s Weekly (August, 1992); Barbara Kopple, Culturefront (Summer, 1993); Eva-Marie Worth, Blimp (Austria) (Spring 1994).
A Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. University of California, 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.
Critical Essays on Erskine Caldwell. 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; John L. Idol, Jr., Studies in Short Fiction (Winter 1982).
Publications (chapters in books):
“My Troubled Relationship with Stanley Cavell: In Pursuit of a Truly Cinematic Conversation,” chapter 5 of David LaRocca, The Thought of Stanley Cavell (New York/London: Bloomsbury, 2020): 108-120.
“Surveying James Benning,” chapter 1 of Nikolaj Lübecker and Daniele Rugo, James Benning’s Environments: Politics, Ecology, Duration (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018): 15-38.
“Ruminating on the Ideologies of Nature Film,” chapter 7 of David LaRocca, ed., The Philosophy of Documentary Film (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2017): 175-191.
“Up Close and Political: Three Short Ruminations on Ideology in the Nature Film,” in Jonathan Kahana, ed., The Documentary Film Reader: History, Theory, Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016): 969-983.
“Panorama: Three Ecocinematic Territories,” chapter 32 of Hubert Zapf, ed., Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2016): 621-643.
“American Avant-Garde Cinema from 1970 to the Present,” reprinted from Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film, Volume IV: 1976 to the Present (Oxford: Blackwell, 2012) in Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann, Art Simon, eds., American Film History: Selected Readings, 1960 to the Present (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015): 241-258.
“Sensorial Cinema: Conjectures/Conversations,” chapter 19 of Adam Bell and Charles H. Traub, eds., Vision Anew: The Lens & Screen Arts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015): 154-165.
“Film Comes First,” chapter in Paul Cronin, ed., Be Sand, Not Oil: The Life and Work of Amos Vogel,. (Vienna: Austrian Film Museum, 2014): 95-109.
“Gardens of the Moon: The Modern Cine-Nocturne,” chapter in Technology and the Garden, Michael G. Lee and Kenneth I. Helphand, eds. (Washington. DC: Dumbarton Oaks Resear4ch Library and Collection, 2014): 201-229.
“The Ecocinema Experience,” in Stephen Rust, Salma Monani, Sean Cubitt, eds., Ecocinema Theory and Practice (New York/London: Routledge/AFI, 2012): 17-41.
“American Avant-Garde Cinema from 1970 to the Present,” in Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film, Volume IV: 1976 to the Present, Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann, Art Simon, eds. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2012): 128-153.
“Ken Jacobs and the Robert Flaherty Seminar,” in Paul Arthur, David James, Michele Pierson, eds., Optic Antics: The Cinema of Ken Jacobs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011): 175-187.
“Art in Cinema: Creating an Audience for Experimental Film,” in Steve Anker, Kathy Geritz, Steve Seid, eds., Radical Light: Alternative Film & Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press/Pacific Film Archive, 2010): 30-34.
“James Benning’s 13 Lakes and Ten Skies and the Culture of Distraction,” in Barbara Pilcher and Claudia Slanar, eds., James Benning (Vienna: Österreichisches filmmuseum, 2007): 218-231.
“Women’s Experimental Cinema: Some Pedagogical Challenges,” in Robin Blaetz, ed., Women’s Experimental Cinema: Critical Frameworks (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007): 360-382.
“Avant-Gardens,” in Jean Petrolle and Virginia Wright Wexman, eds. Women and Experimental Filmmaking (Chicago/Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005): 208-237.
Discussions of films by Marie Menken, Marjorie Keller, Carolee Schneemann, Anne Charlotte Robertson, and Rose Lowder.
“There’s No Light without Heat, and No Heat without Friction: Avant-Garde Film in the College Classroom,” Chapter 18 (pp. 401-435) of Kecia McBride, ed., Visual Media and the Humanities: A Pedagogy of Representation. Tennessee Studies in Literature, Volume 42. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004.
“Experimental Cinema in the 1980s,” Chapter 10 (pp. 390-444) of Stephen Prince, ed., A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood under the Electronic Rainbow, 1980-1989, vol. 10 of A History of the American Cinema. University of California Press, 1999.
“Quote . . . Unquote: Passages from Flaherty Seminar Discussions” (with filmmakers Trinh T. Minh-ha, Peter Watkins, Su Friedrich, William Greaves, Ken Jacobs, Kazuo Hara, Nick Deocampo, and Mani Kaul) and “Avant-Garde Film at the Flaherty,” in Erik Barnouw and Patricia R. Zimmermann, eds., The Flaherty: Four Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema, a special monograph by Wide Angle, vol. 17, nos. 1-4 (1996), pp. 105-164, 257-267.
“Raphael Montanez Ortiz: Deconstructionist Critique,” Chapter 11 (pp. 183-207) of Chon A. Noriega and Ana M. Lopez, eds., The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts. University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
“Ralph Steiner: A Re-Introduction,” Chapter 9 (pp. 205-233) of Jan-Christopher Horak, ed., Lovers of Cinema: The First American Film Avant-Garde 1919-1945. University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.
Appearances in/on film/television:
Talking head on Paul Cronin’s Film as a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16 (2004).
Talking head on Criterion DVD release of William Greaves’ Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One and Take 2 ½.
Appearance in Chuck Workman’s Visionaries (2010).
Talking head on FilmStruck’s “The Qatsi Trilogy: Life As Film” (produced by Anne Wilson).
Publications (articles):
“A Time to Stir, reviewed by Scott MacDonald” (a Cineaste Web Exclusive: https://www.cineaste.com/summer2021/a-time-to-stir.
“Abbas Kiarostami’s Final Frame—An Elegy,” Found Footage Magazine 7 (March 2021): 54-61
“Recent Archival Engagements with the War to End All Wars,” Found Footage Magazine 6 (March 2020): 44-61.
“Robert Huot: The Painter As Filmmaker,” a catalog essay for a show of Robert Huot’s paintings at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York, 2019. Pp. 26-34.
“Tracing the Roots of Ethnographic Cinema in Where the Roads All End,” review of Ilisa Barbash, Where the Roads All End (Peabody Museum and Harvard University Press, 2016), in on-line issue of Documentary (the publication of the International Documentary Association), July 31, 2019. [On line at https://www.documentary.org/online-feature/ilisa-barbash-traces-roots-ethnographic-cinema-where-roads- all-end].
“Lyrical Television,” Framework 59: no. 1 (Spring 2018): 32-46.“A Sudden Passion 2: The Dockworker’s Dream by Bill Morrison,” Found Footage Magazine 4 (March, 2018): 44-51.
“Sharon Lockhart and James Benning: Decelerating Cinema,” Dok Review July 17, 2017 (on-line: http://www.dokrevue.com/clanky/sharon-lockhart-and-james-benning-decelerating-cinema). “Light Manoeuvres” (on Babette Mangolte), Sight&Sound 27, no 4 (April 2017): 61.
“Film Catalogs as Epistemology—A Memoir,” The Moving Image 16, no. 2 (Fall 2016): 107-113.
“Peter Hutton: Hudson River Filmmaker,” catalog essay for the Raymond Beecher Memorial Lecture, sponsored by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. Catskill, NY: Thomas Cole National Historic Site, 2016.
“Painting Into Film/Film Into Painting,” essay on Gustav Deutsch’s Shirley: Visions of Reality for KGP DVD release of the film. 2016; “Here and There/Now and Then,” essay on three Gustav Deutsch films for the Index DVD release of “Gustav Deutsch: Not Home: Picturing the Foreign Films 1990-2015.”
“Documenting Devotion: A Brief History of North American CineScenes,” the introduction to Clint Enns, ed., John Porter’s CineScenes: Documentary Portraits of Alternative Film Scenes, Toronto and Beyond, 1978-2015 (Toronto: the8fest Small Gauge Film Festival, 2015): 5-9.
“A Sudden Passion: Carlos Adriano’s Sem Titulo #1: Dance of Leitfossil,” Film Quarterly, vol. 69, no. 1 (Fall 2015): 45-51.
“Celebration and Warning,” essay on Godfrey Reggio’s Qatsi Trilogy for Criterion DVD, “The Qatsi Trilogy: Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, Naqoyqatsi.
“Avant-Doc: Eight Intersections,” Film Quarterly, vol. 64, no. 2 (Winter 2010): 50-57.
“Life in the Balance: On Artavazd Peleshian,” Artforum, vol. 48, no. 6 (February 2010), pp. 61-62.
“In Common Hours: On the Films of Andrew Noren ,” Artforum, vol. 48, no. 2 (October 2009), pp. 212-17.
“Going Beneath the Surface,” essay on Jean Painlevé for Criterion DVD, “Science Is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painlevé”
“An Ethics and an Aesthetics of Interviewing,” Cinema Journal, vol. 47, no. 2 (Winter 2008), pp. 123-129. Part of a special In Focus on “The Practitioner Interview,” edited by Christine Cornea.
“Poetry and Avant-Garde Film: Three Recent Contributions,” Poetics Today, vol. 28, no. 1 (Spring 2007), pp. 1-41. An earlier version of this piece, “Poetry and Film: Cinema As Publication,” was published in Framework, vol. 47, no. 2 (Fall 2006), pp. 37-58.
“Up Close and Political: Three Short Ruminations on Ideology in the Nature Film,” Film Quarterly, vol. 59, no. 3 (Spring 2006), pp. 4-21.
“The Mohawk Valley Journey to The Journey with Film Director Peter Watkins,” Mohawk Valley History, vol. 2, no. 2 (Winter 2005-2006), pp. 83-109.
“Film History and ‘Film History’: Exhibition and American Academe—One Academic’s Story,” A Closer Look/Hidden Histories (San Francisco: National Alliance for Media Arts & Culture, 2005), pp. 32-41.
Forward to new edition of Amos Vogel, Film As a Subversive Art (London: DAP, 2005), pp. 1-4.
“Toward an Eco-Cinema,” ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment), vol. 11, no. 2 (Fall, 2004), pp. 107-132.
“Professional Myopia: How American Academe is Failing Cinema,” Quarterly Review of Film Studies, vol. 19, no. 3 (July-September, 2002), pp. 201-207.
“Peter Hutton: The Filmmaker As Luminist,” Chicago Review, vol. 47, no. 3 (Fall 2001), pp. 67-87.
“The Attractions of Nature in Early Cinema,” catalogue essay for The Unseen Cinema (New York: Anthology Film Archives, 2001), pp. 56-63
“The Filmmaker As Lone Rider: James Benning’s Westerns,” Western American Literature, vol. 35, no. 3 (Fall 2000), pp. 298-318.
“Ten (Alternative) Films about the American City,” ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment), vol. 8, no. 1 (Winter 2001), pp. 53-72. Included in Scott Slovic and Michael P. Branch, eds., The ISLE Reader: Ecocriticism, 1993-2003 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003).
Review essay on Experimental Ethnography (Duke University Press, 1999) by Catherine Russell, Canadian Journal of Film Studies, vol. 9, no. 1 (Spring 2000), pp. 117-123.
“From the Sublime to the Vernacular: Jan DeBont’s Twister and George Kuchar’s Weather Diaries,” Film Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 1 (Fall 1999), pp. 12-25.
“Ten (Alternative) Films and Videos on American Nature,” ISLE, vol. 6, no. 1 (Winter 1999), pp. 1-14.
“Re-Envisioning the American West: Babette Mangolte’s The Sky on Location, James Benning’s North on Evers, Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, and Ellen Spiro’s Roam Sweet Home,” American Studies, vol. 39, no. 1 (Winter 1999), pp. 115-146.
“The Country in the City: Central Park in Jonas Mekas’ Walden and William Greaves’ Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One,” Journal of American Studies, vol. 31, no. 3 (Winter 1997), pp. 337-360.
“The City As the Country: The New York City Symphony from Rudy Burckhardt to Spike Lee,” Film Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 2 (Winter 1997-98), pp. 2-20.
“The Garden in the Machine: Two American Avant-Garde Films and the Nineteenth Century Visual Arts,” Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies (1997), pp. 239-262.
“Notes on Some California City Films,” Wide Angle, vol. 19, no. 4 (October 1997), pp. 109-130.
“The Films of Trinh T. Minh-ha,” catalogue essay commisioned by the Colgate University Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, on the occasion of a retrospective of Trinh T. Minh-ha’s films, October 11-26, 1994.
“Inheriting the Lumieres’ Momentum,” Blimp (Austria), no. 27-28 (Spring 1994), pp. 4-9.
“Film Theory 101: Visiting Filmmakers—Why Bother?” The Independent, vol. 16, no. 8 (October 1993), pp. 24-27, 55; reprinted (in a slightly different version) in Journal of Film and Video, vol. 46, no. 4 (Winter 1995), pp. 3-12.
“The Filmmaker As Global Circumnavigator: Peter Watkins’ The Journey and Media Critique,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 14, no. 4 (Spring 1993), pp. 31-54; reprinted in Barry Keith Grant and Jeanette Sloniowski, eds., Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video (Wayne State University Press, 1998), pp. 360-378.
“From Zygote to Global Cinema Via Su Friedrich’s Films,” essay for a special issue of Journal of Film and Video, vol. 44, no. 1-2 (Spring/Summer 1992), pp. 30-41, based on a paper delivered at the Soviet/American Robert Flaherty Seminar, Riga, Latvia, September, 1990.
“Process Is Product/Product Is Process: Peter Watkins’ The Journey,” in a special issue of Willamette Journal of the Liberal Arts, Supplemental Series 5 (1991), edited by Ken Nolley.
“Ernie Gehr: Camera Obscura/Lens/Filmstrip,” Film Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 4 (Summer 1990), pp. 10-16.
“Morgan Fisher: Film on Film,” Cinema Journal, vol. 28, no. 2 (Winter 1989), pp. 13-27.
“Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket: A Survey of Single-Shot Film,” Afterimage, vol. 16, no. 8 (March 1989), pp. 10-16.
“From the Pole to the Equator,” Film Quarterly, vol. 42 (Spring 1989), pp. 33-38. Translated and reprinted in Sergio Toffetti, ed., Yervant Gianikian/Angela Ricci Lucchi (Florence/Turin: Hopeful Monster/Muzeo Nationale del Cinema, 1992), pp. 34-45.
“Acquired Tastes,” a catalogue essay commissioned by the Black Maria Film Festival, 1989.
“Text As Image (in Some Recent North American Avant-Garde Films),” a special supplement to Afterimage, vol. 13, no. 8 (March 1986), pp. 9-20; reprinted in mot: dites, image, a catalogue for a film series at the Musee National d’Art Moderne at the Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris, October-November, 1988.
“Cinema As Discourse,” Journal of Film and Video, vol. 40, no. 2 (Spring 1988), pp. 33-43.
“Su Friedrich: Reappropriations,” Film Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 2 (Winter 1987-88), pp. 34-43.
“Amos Vogel and Cinema 16,” Wide Angle, vol. 9, no. 3 (Fall 1987), pp. 38-51.
“James Benning’s American Dreams,” Film Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 4 (Summer 1987), pp. 33-38.
“College Course File: Film and Literature,” Journal of Film and Video, vol. 39 (Summer 1987), pp. 56-66.
“The Means Justify the Ends: Peter Watkins, from The War Game to The Journey,” Afterimage, vol. 14, no. 9 (April 1987), pp. 4-7.
“Lost Lost Lost over Lost Lost Lost,” Cinema Journal, vol. 25, no. 2 (Winter 1986), pp. 20-34. Translated into Portuguese and published in Jonas Mekas (Sao Paulo: Ministério da Cultura, 2013): 143-164. Translated into German and published in Film-Konzepte: 61 (July 2021): 22-42.
“Michael Snow’s So Is This,” Film Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 1 (Fall 1985), pp. 34-37.
“The Men Cooperated: Carolee Schneemann’s ABC,” Afterimage, vol. 12, no. 9 (April 1985), pp. 12-15.
“ALL HAN ZON DEK!: A Reading of Emmett Williams’ The Voy Age,” Afterimage, vol. 12, no. 6 (January 1985), pp. 4-6. Reprinted in Emmett Williams, My Life in Flux–and Vice Versa (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), pp. 316-323.
“North American Avant-Garde Film: A Personal Review,” Afterimage, vol. 11, no. 7 (February 1984), pp. 12-13.
“Confessions of a Feminist Porn Watcher,” Film Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 3 (Spring 1983), pp. 10-17; reprinted in Michael S. Kimmel, ed., Men Confront Pornography (New York: Crown, 1990), pp. 34-43; in Brian Henderson and Ann Martin, eds. Film Quarterly: Forty Years—A Selection (University of California Press, 1999), pp. 190-202; and (in a shortened version) in Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez, Gender, Race, and Class (Sage, 1994), pp. 307-313. It is discussed in B. Ruby Rich, Chick Flicks (Duke University Press, 1998), pp. 362-363; by Linda Williams in Hard Core (University of California Press, 1989), pp. 80-81; by Peter Lehman in Running Scared (Temple University Press, 1993), p. 170.
“The Avant-Garde Film: Why Fight It?” Journal of the University Film Association, vol. 33, no. 2 (Spring 1981), pp. 3-7; reprinted in American Federation of Arts Newsletter, October, 1985.
“Erskine Caldwell,” entry in James J. Martine, ed., Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 9: American Novelists, 1910-1945 (Gale, 1981), pp. 122-131.
“Erskine Caldwell,” entry in Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century, vol. 1 (Ungar, 1981), pp. 379-381.
“Against False Distinctions,” Film Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 1 (Fall 1981), pp. 58-60.
“Patrick Clancy’s Photoscrolls,” Afterimage, vol. 8, no. 10 (May 1981), pp. 13-16.
“Long, Long Films and Short, Short Films,” Afterimage, vol. 8, no. 8 (March 1981), pp. 6-8.
“Enough Good Reasons for Reading, Studying, and Teaching Erskine Caldwell,” special Caldwell issue of Pembroke, no. 11 (1979), pp. 7-18.
“Carolee Schneemann’s Autobiographical Trilogy,” Film Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 1 (Fall 1980), pp. 27-32.
“Surprise! The Films of Robert Huot, 1967-1972,” Quarterly Review of Film Studies, vol. 5 (Summer 1980), pp. 297-318.
“New Challenges, New Experiences: Some Recent Films,” Afterimage, vol. 6, no. 9 (April 1979), pp. 8-13.
“The Cinema Audience: Some New Perspectives,” Film Criticism, vol. 3, no. 3 (Spring 1979), pp. 32-40.
“How Meaningful Are ‘Ten Best’ Lists?” Afterimage, vol. 5, no 3 (October 1978), pp. xx-xx.
“Print Generation,” Film Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1 (Fall 1978), pp. 58-62.
“The Films of Taka Iimura,” Afterimage, vol. 5, no. 10 (April 1978), pp. 8-11; reprinted in Takahiko Iimura: Film and Video (Anthology Film Archives, 1990); and in several catalogues published in Germany and in Japan.
“The Expanding Vision of Larry Gottheim’s Films,” Quarterly Review of Film Studies, vol. 3, no. 2 (Spring 1978), pp. 207-235.
“Independent Film: Where’s the Audience?” Afterimage, vol. 5, no. 9 (March 1978), pp. 6-7.
“Hollis Frampton’s Hapax Legomena,” Afterimage, vol. 5, no. 7 (January 1978), pp. 8-13.
Bibliography of Erskine Caldwell’s first publications in English, featured in Matthew J. Bruccoli, ed., First Printings of American Authors, vol. 2 (Gale, 1978), pp. 85-97.
“An Evaluative Check-List of Erskine Caldwell’s Short Stories,” Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 15, no. 1 (winter 1978), pp. 81-97.
“Repetition As Technique in the Short Stories of Erskine Caldwell,” Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 15, no. 2 (Fall 1977), pp. 213-225.
“Hemingway’s ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’: Three Critical Problems,” Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 11, no. 1 (Winter 1974), pp. 64-74.
“Implications of Narrative Perspective in Hemingway’s ‘Now I Lay Me,’” Studies in American Fiction, vol. 1, no. 2 (Fall 1973), pp. 213-220.
“The Confusing Dialogue in Hemingway’s ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’: A Final Word?” Studies in American Fiction, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1973), pp. 93-101.
“Implications of Narrative Perspective in Hemingway’s ‘The Undefeated,’” Journal of Narrative Technique, vol. 2, no. 1 (January 1972), pp. 1-15.
Publications (interviews):
“More Is More: An Interview with Paul Cronin,” Found Footage Magazine 7 (March 2021): 93-104.
“Visiting the Louvre with #monalisa: In Interview with Vernon Lott, Jennifer Anderson, Nandan Rao, Peter Broderick, and David Allred,” Cineaste 46: 2 (Spring 2021): 22-26.
“Lost in the Green Fog and Feeling Vertigo: An Interview with Guy Maddin and Evan and Galen Johnson,” Cineaste 56: no. 1 (Winter 2020): 26-29.
“’The Film Is Our Director’: Interview with Ken Winokur, Terry Donahue, and Roger Miller—the Alloy Orchestra,” Film History: 32, no. 2 (Summer 2020): 121-143.
“Out in the Desert with Sundog: An Interview with Lisa Marie Malloy and J. P. Sniadecki,” Cineaste: 45: no. 4 (Fall 2020): 20-25.
“That Is Her Real Name; An Interview with Penny Lane,” Cineaste 54: no. 4 (Fall 2019): 14-19.
“Interview with Carlos Adriano,” Found Footage Magazine 5 (March 2019): 124-137.
“The Landscape of Futurelessness: An Interview with Brett Story,” Film Quarterly 72, no. 1 (Fall 2018): 50-57.
“Patrick Bokanowski and The Angel”/”Patrick Bokanowski à propos de L’Ange,” interview originally published in A Critical Cinema 3, reprinted in English and French (translation by Marc Ulrich) in booklet accompanying the DVD release of L’Ange by Re:Voir: 16-23, 38-47.
“In His Face: An Interview with Yance Ford on Strong Island,” Cineaste 43: 1 (Winter 2017): Web Exclusive.
“Orpheus of Nitrate: The Emergence of Bill Morrison,” Framework 57, no. 2 (Fall 2016): 116-137.
“Benning Goes Digital: An Interview,” Found Footage Magazine, No. 3 (March 2017): 102-115.
“The Filmmaker as Miner: An Interview with Bill Morrison,” Cineaste 62, no.1 (Winter 2016): 40-43.
“Interview with Bill Morrison: 6 Recent Films,” Millennium Film Journal: 64 (Fall 2016): 56-67.
“Something Old, Something New: Two DVDs from Gustav Deutsch,” Found Footage Magazine, No. 2 (May 2016): 89-98.
“Documentary Educational Resources: A Brief Oral History,” Film History 25, no. 4 (2013): 143-160.
“Cine-Surveillance—3 Avant-Docs: Interviews with Amie Siegel, Sharon Lockhart, Jane Gillooly,” Film Quarterly, vol. 66, no. 4 (Summer 2013): 28-40.
“Dossier: Conversations on the Avant-Doc” (ianterviews with Ilisa Barbash, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, J. P. Sniadecki, Stephanie Spray, and Véréna Paravel), Framework, vol. 54, no. 2 (Fall 2013): 259-330.
“Interview with Susana de Sousa Dias,” Film Quarterly, vol. 66, no. 2 (Winter 2012): 25-34.
“Remaking a Found Footage Film in a Digital Age An Interview with Jennifer Proctor,” Millennium Film Journal, no.57 (2013): 84-91.
“Knots in the Head: An Interview with Michael Glawogger,” Film Quarterly, vol. 66, no. 1 (Fall 2012): 40-49.
“An Interview with Alfred Guzzetti,” Millennium Film Journal, no. 55 (Spring 2012): 70-83.
“Perception As Transcendence: Interview with Paweł Wojtasik,” Film Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 2 (Winter 2011): 52-58.
Interview with Péter Forgács, in Bill Nichols, Michael Renov, eds., Cinema’s Alchemist: The Films of Péter Forgács (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011): 3-38.
“Indonesia in Motion: An Interview with Leonard Retel Helmrich,” Film Quarterly, vol. 63, no. 3 (Spring 2010): 35-41.
Interview with Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou, Natural History, vol. 118, no. 8 (October 2009): 24-29
“From Underground to Multiplex: An Interview with Todd Haynes,” Film Quarterly, vol. 62, no. 3 (Spring 2009): 54-64.
“A Conversation with Gustav Deutsch,” in Gustav Deutsch, eds. Wilbirg Brainin-Donnenberg, Michael Loebenstein (Vienna: Österreichisches Filmmuseum/SYNEMA, 2009): 63-73, 145-162.
“Peter Hutton’s At Sea,” Esopus, 10 (2008): 24-28.
“Gentle Iconoclast: An Interview with David Gatten,” Film Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 2 (Winter 2007-2008), pp. 36-44.
“Testing Your Patience: An Interview with James Benning,” Artforum, vol. 56, no.1 (September 2007), pp. 428-437, 494.
“Abbas Kiarostami Visits Bard College: Interview by Scott MacDonald,” Bard College Journal of the Moving Image, no. 2 (Spring 2007), pp. 2-19.
“Collection/Recollection: An Interview with Matthias Müller,” Framework, vol. 46, no. 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 29-50. Reprinted in Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, ed. The Memo Book: Films, Videos and Installations by Matthias Müller (Berlin: VErlag Vorwerk 8, 2005), pp. 218-271.
“Between Two Worlds: An Interview with Shirin Neshat,” Feminist Studies, vol. 30, no. 3 (Fall 2004), pp. 620-650.
“His African Journey: An Interview with Peter Kubelka,” Film Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 3 (Spring 2004), pp. 2-12.
“The Filmmaker as Visionary: Excerpts from an Interview with Stan Brakhage,” Film Quarterly, vol. 56, no. 3 (Spring 2003), pp. 2-11
“Interview with Peggy Ahwesh,” Millennium Film Journal, Nos. 39-40 (Winter 2003), pp. 1-30.
“Sacred Speed: An Interview with Nathaniel Dorsky,” Film Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 4 (Summer 2001), pp. 2-11.
“Transcendental Domesticity: An Interview with Leighton Pierce,” The Independent, vol. 22, no. 6 (July 1999), pp. 32-35.
“Rose Lowder Interviewed,” Millennium Film Journal, nos. 30-31 (Fall 1997), pp. 132-148.
“Storm Chaser: An Interview with George Kuchar about the Weather Diaries,” The Independent, vol. 20, no. 6 (July 1997), pp. 38-42.
“Interview with Cauleen Smith,” Camera Obscura, no. 36 (September 1995), pp. 118-133.
“A Moment of Seeing: An Interview with Peter Hutton,” The Independent, vol. 19, no. 10 (December 1996), pp. 30-34.
“Interview with Sally Potter,” Camera Obscura, no. 35 (1995), pp. 187-221.
“Sp . . . Sp . . . Spaces of Inscription: An Interview with Martin Arnold,” Film Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 1 (Fall 1994), pp. 2-11; translated into German and reprinted in Alexander Horwath, Lisl Ponger, Gottfried Schlemmer, eds., Avantgardefilm Osterreich. 1950 bis Heute (Wespennest, 1995), pp. 284-300.
“The Axeman Cometh: An Interview with Raphael Montanez Ortiz,” The Independent, vol. 17, no. 8 (October 1994), pp. 26-31.
“Sunday in the Park with Bill: An Interview with William Greaves about Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One,” The Independent, vol. 15, no. 4 (May 1992), pp. 24-29.
“Demystifying the Female Body/Two Interviews: Anne Severson (Near the Big Chakra) and Yvonne Rainer (Privilege),” Film Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 1 (Fall 1991), pp. 18-32. The Rainer interview was reprinted in Yvonne Rainer, A Woman Who. . . : Essays, Interviews, Scripts (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), pp. 244-256.
“Illuminations: An Interview with Andrew Noren,” Film Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 3 (Spring 1991), pp. 30-43.
“Interview with Anne Robertson,” Cinematograph, no. 4 (1991). Introduction translated into French and reprinted in Yann Beauvais, Jean-Michel Bouhours, Le Je film (Centre Georges Pompidou, 1995), pp. xx-xx.
“Daddy Dearest: An Interview with Su Friedrich,” The Independent, vol. 13, no. 10 (December 1990), pp. 28-34.
“Yoko Ono: Ideas on Film (Interview/Scripts),” Film Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 1 (Fall 1989), pp. 2-23
“But First, a Little Ru Ru: An Interview with Robert Breer,” the Velvet Light Trap, no. 24 (Fall 1989), pp. 75-84.
“Interview with Lizzie Borden,” Feminist Studies, vol. 15, no. 2 (Summer 1989), pp. 327-345.
“Southern Exposure: An Interview with Ross McElwee,” Film Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 4 (Summer 1988), pp. 13-23.
“Damned If You Don’t: An Interview with Su Friedrich,” Afterimage, vol. 15, no. 10 (May 1988), pp. 6-10.
“Interview with Anthony McCall,” Afterimage, vol. 15, no. 5 (December 1987), pp. 6-9.
“Interview with Morgan Fisher,” Film Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 3 (spring 1987), pp. 24-33.
“Magic Reclaimed: An Interview with Diana Barrie,” Afterimage, vol. 14, no. 7 (February 1987), pp. 5-9.
“The Millennium After Twenty Years: An Interview with Howard Guttenplan,” Millennium Film Journal (20th Anniversary Issue), no. 16-18 (Fall/Winter 1986-87), pp. 9-24.
“Raw Nerves: An Interview with Manuel DeLanda,” Afterimage, vol. 13, no. 6 (January 1986), pp. 12-16.
“George Kuchar: An Interview,” Film Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 3 (Spring 1985), pp. 2-15.
“The Nuclear War Film: Peter Watkins Interviewed,” The Independent, vol. 7, no. 9 (October 1984), pp. 22-24, 32.
“Interview with Jonas Mekas,” October, no. 29 (Summer 1984), pp. 82-116. Reprinted in Jonas Mekas, a catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition, “Jonas Mekas,” at Museum Ludwig, Köln (2008) and Serpentine Gallery, London (2010): 137-171, 233-243 (German version); and in Jonas Mekas: Interviews, edited by Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker (University Press of Mississippi, 2020)
“Points of View: An Interview with Babette Mangolte,” Afterimage, vol. 12, nos. 1-2 (Summer 1984), pp. 8-13.
“Cinema 16: An Interview with Amos Vogel,” Film Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 3 (Spring 1984), pp. 19-29.
“Program Notes: An Interview with Karen Cooper,” Afterimage, vol. 11, no. 4 (Summer 1983), pp. 4-6.
“We Were Intent on Having a Good Time: Interview with Robert Nelson, Part 1” Afterimage, vol. 11, nos. 1-2 (Summer 1983), pp. 39-43; “If the Vision Is Intense Enough, Everything Is Grist for the Mill: An Interview with Robert Nelson, Part 2,” Afterimage, vol. 11, no. 3 (October 1983), pp. 12-15.
“Interview with Beth B and Scott B,” October, no. 24 (Spring 1983), pp. 3-36.
“I Never Understood Anything about Cowboys: An Interview with J. J. Murphy,” Afterimage, vol. 9, no. 7 (October 1982), pp. 12-18.
“I Don’t Go to the Movies Anymore: An Interview with Bruce Conner,” Afterimage, vol. 10, nos. 1-2 (Summer 1982), pp. 20-23.
“Interview with Vivienne Dick,” October, no. 20 (Spring 1982), pp. 83-101.
“John Waters’Divine Comedy,” Artforum, vol. 20, no. 5 (January 1982), pp. 52-60. Reprinted in James Egan, ed., John Waters Interviews (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2011): 71-92.
“Interview with James Benning and Bette Gordon,” Afterimage, vol. 9, no. 5 (December 1981), pp. 12-19.
“Interview with Taka Iimura,” Journal of the University Film Association, vol. 33, no. 4 (Fall 1981), pp. 21-44.
“All the Faces Are Us: An Interview with Tom Chomont,” Afterimage, vol. 9, nos. 1-2 (June 1981), pp. 26-34.
“Film and Performance: An Interview with Carolee Schneemann,” Millennium Film Journal, no. 7-9 (Fall/Winter 1980-81), pp. 95-114.
“Interview with Robert Huot,” Afterimage, vol. 7, no. 7 (February 1980), pp. 8-12.
“Interview with Hollis Frampton: The Early Years,” October, no. 12 (Spring 1980), pp. 103-126.
“Interview with Hollis Frampton: Zorns Lemma,” Quarterly Review of Film Studies, vol. 4, no. 1 (Winter 1979), pp. 23-37.
“Interview with Hollis Frampton: Hapax Legomena,” Film Culture, no. 67 (Fall 1979), pp. 158-180.
“Larry Gottheim’s ‘Webs of Subtle Relationships’: An Interview,” Afterimage, vol. 6, no. 4 (November 1978), pp. 7-11.
Selected film and art programming:
Workshops and curated screenings at Union Docs (Brooklyn) in December, 2009, February, 2012; 5-part Skype course on Avant-Docs, October-November, 2012.
Curated “American Places and Travels,” a 16-event series of events at Colgate University, spring 2011.
Principle programmer at the Stan Brakhage Symposium, Boulder, Colorado, March 2011.
Curated three programs of film in honor of Art in Cinema, the San Francisco film society, for SFMoMA, February, 2010.
Presented master class, and programmed two shows of films that straddle the categories of avant-garde film and documentary, at UnionDocs, in Brooklyn, on December 18-20, 2009.
Programmed and presented films as representations of Place as the inaugural public event at the Storefront for Urban Projects in San Francisco, on March 27, 2009.
Programmed and presented film shows commemorating the history of Canyon Cinema at the Harvard Film Archive on April 18, 2008; at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on October 8, 2008; at Canyon Cinema in San Francisco on November 21 and 22, 2008; at the San Francisco Cinematheque, on November 23, 2008, and at the Pacific Film Archive, on November 25, 2008.
Programmed and presented series of visiting filmmakers, curated shows of short films, and rarely seen classic films at Hamilton College for the Humanities Now F.I.L.M. (Forum for Images and Languages in Motion) program. 90 events between Fall 2005 and Fall 2009. On-going.
Programmed and presented “The Essence of Cinema 16” (2 programs) on September 24th, 2007; and “Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor” (2 programs), on April 18th, 2008, at the Harvard Film Archive.
Presented two programs of film in conjunction with “On the Street: The New York School of Photographers,” at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, on February 3rd and 10th, 2005.
Presented two programs on place in independent cinema and video at the Aurora Picture Show in Houston, Texas, on April 3rd/4th, 2004.
Presented lecture/screening, “The Garden in the Machine,” at the Antwerp Film Museum, Antwerp, Belgium, November 8, 2004.
Curated and presented a two-program homage to Stan Brakhage at Colgate University in September, 2003.
Arranged Yoko Ono’s visit to Bard in Fall of 2002.
Curated and presented a four program film series, “Art and the Creative Process,” at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York, in April 2003.
Curated and presented a two-program homage to Cinema 16 for the Museum of Modern Art in Nov., 2002.
Curated and presented a fourteen-event public series, “American Place in American Avant-Garde Film,” at the University of Arizona, during winter, 2000.
Curated and on July 21, 1998 introduced “A Critical Cinema,” a six-part series based on my book, A Critical Cinema 3, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.
Curated and presented “Homage to Cinema 16” at the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar in October, 1997; at the Chicago Historical Society in September, 1998; and at Ithaca College in October, 1999.
Curated and presented four evenings of film at “The Environmental Imagination: Issues and Problems in American Nature Writing,” a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for College and
University Faculty, hosted by the American Culture Program at Vassar College, June-July, 1997. As part of my work at the Institute, I also programmed and presented a video sidebar.
Programmed and presented a series of seventeen retrospective screenings in homage to Cinema 16, at Anthology Film Archives, during April, 1994. Reviews: J. Hoberman, The Voice (April 12, 1994), p. 51;
Larry Hackett, New York Daily News (April 6, 1994), p. 39; Jerry Tallmer, Bergen County Record (April 8, 1994), p. 7; Alyssa Katz, The Voice (April 26, 1994), p. 62.
Curated and presented four evenings of film at “Hudson Valley Images and Texts: Constructing a National
Culture in Nineteenth Century America,” a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for
College and University Faculty, hosted by the American Culture Program at Vassar College, June-July, 1993.
I programmed a section of the 38th Robert Flaherty Seminar, during August of 1992 at Wells College. I invoted, organized presentations, and moderated discussions with Ken Jacobs, Holly Fisher, John Porter, Godfrey Reggio, and Chris Welsby. This program was reviewed by Jesse Lerner, “Flaherty in Motion,”
Afterimage, vol. 20, no. 5 (December 1992), pp. 3-4 (see also the letters section), and by Laura Marks in “Here’s Gazing at You,” The Independent, vol. 16, no. 2 (March 1993), pp. 26-31.
From 1973 until 1999, I programmed regular series of film events at Utica College. These series made a variety of films—classic and recent foreign language films, North American, European, and Asian experimental film, nonfiction film from around the world . . .—available to the Mohawk Valley area.
Many filmmakers and lecturers (among them Peter Watkins, Jonas Mekas, Yvonne Rainer, Paul Sharits, Frederick Wiseman, D. A. Pennebaker, Martha Coolidge, Larry Gottheim, Hollis Frampton, Ernie Gehr, Barry Gerson, Frank and Caroline Mouris, George Griffin, Beth B and Scott B, Vivienne Dick, J. J. Murphy, Jackie Shearer, Robert Huot, Carolee Schneemann, Taka Iimura, Manuel DeLanda, James Benning, George Kuchar, Patricia Zimmermann, Robert Breer, Barbara Hammer, Vicki Z. Peterson, AlanBerliner, Marjorie Keller, Ross McElwee, Peter Rose, John Porter, Chris Welsby, Anne Charlotte Robertson, William Moritz, Rick Prelinger, Warren Sonbert, William Greaves, Pearl Bowser, Raphael Montanez Ortiz, Willie Varela, Su Friedrich, Ellen Spiro, Randall Tex Cobb, and Leah Gilliam) visited
Utica College as part of the series. Series presentations averaged between 75 and 100 people per event, for approximately 30 events a year, for more than 20 years. Copies of program brochures are available.
As part of my work as Adjunct Professor of Film at Hamilton College from Fall 1981 through Fall 1999, I organized visits to campus by Laura Mulvey, Su Friedrich, Peter Watkins, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Huot, Ernie Gehr, Robert Breer, John Porter, Sarah Elder, Ellen Spiro, Alan Berliner, Peggy Ahwesh, Peter Hutton, James Benning, Jennifer Reeves, Leighton Pierce, Abigail Child, Peter Forgacs, Ross McElwee, and others, and organized screenings and series (most recently, “Queer Sidebar: Landmarks of Queer Cinema,” in Spring, 1999).
Curated “Homage to Cinema 16,” the Film Forum (New York) program for May 28 to June 10, 1986. The program was reviewed by Walter Goodman in The New York Times (May 28, 1986, Section C, p. 15) and Amy Taubin in The Village Voice (June 3, 1996, p. 57).
Curated “Frames of Mind: Recent Filmmaking in Central New York,” the 48th Annual Regional Exhibition of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute in Utica, New York, March 7 to May 4, 1986. “Frames of Mind” included fourteen screenings of films by Hollis Frampton, Larry Gottheim, Robert Huot, Ernie Gehr, Bill Brand, David Gearey, Norman Bloom, J. J. Murphy, Owen Shapiro, and John Knecht; multi-image film presentations by Robert Huot and Phill Niblock; and a large gallery show of film-related series photographs, paintings, and works in other forms by Alan Berliner, Patrick Clancy, Susan Eder, Marion Faller, Hollis Frampton, Robert Huot, Carol Kinne, and Lorna Lentini. Frames of Mind, a catalogue for the show, is available.
Curated and presented a seven-part series on the history of animation for the Kirkland Art Center, Clinton, New York, during the fall of 1985. The series included four historical programs and visits by Carmen D’Avino and George Griffin.
Curated and presented a series of six programs on film and art as a benefit for Sculpture Space, of Utica, New York, at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute.
In 1981-82, working with the Central New York Community Arts Council, I programmed and introduced a series of films by classic American directors. The programs were held at the Stanley Performing Arts Center and were attended by an average of 300 people.
In the early 1980s I organized and curated art shows at the Barrett Art Gallery at Utica College (which I played a role in founding), including a show of Patrick Clancy’s photoscrolls, a show of Marion Faller’s photographs, a large indoor/outdoor retrospective of sculpture made at Sculpture Space in Utica, a show of Robert Huot’s diary paintings and films, and shows of Marc Mancini’s sculpture, of Carol Kinne’s paintings, of Robert Huot’s anti-nuclear posters, and of Robert Huot’s pre-cinema devices.
The Journey:
A major segment of Peter Watkins’ 14 ½-hour film, The Journey, was shot in Central New York in early October, 1984. The film, which was finished in October, 1986, was produced and shot in locations around the world; it was edited at the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal. I was in charge of fund-raising and organizing the Central New York filming. In fall 1983 I assembled working committees, and during the following months we held dozens of activities: a community dinner, an art auction, a flea market, screenings, discussions . . . and raised $40,000 (including a $20,000 New York State Council on the Arts production grant). During summer of 1984 a professional crew was assembled (most were local or native to this region), and a committee of faculty and students from Utica College and Colgate University did the necessary research for the film. The shooting itself involved several hundred people and several center-city neighborhoods in Utica, as well as teachers, administrators, and students from the Utica and Ilion school systems..
During the fall of 1986 and spring 1987, I coordinated the American premiere of The Journey, which was held at the Stanley Performing Arts Center in Utica, on April 24-26. 1987. The event drew 1700 admissions to three days of screenings. I represented The Journey at its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February, 1987; at the Festival of Festivals in Toronto, in September, 1987; at the Documentary and Short Film Festival in Leipzig, Germany; and at the Flaherty Film Seminar in August, 1987. I have presented the film, or portions of it, at numerous venues.
Selected invited lectures, conference presentations, interviews, book and conference reviews:
“Thomas Cole at the Movies,” presentation at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, NY, February 9, 2013.
Invited presenter at Séances: The Cinematic Event. Columbia University, April 4-5, 2013
Curated and hosted an evening (5/2/09) with poet John Ashbery at the Harvard Film Archive, focusing on filmmakers who claim Ashbery as an influence.
Invited presenter at the 2008-09 Pembroke Center Roundtable at Brown University, 4/23-24/09
Presented a tribute to Bruce Conner at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, 4/26/09
Keynote speaker at Avant-Doc: Intersections of Avant-Garde and Documentary Film, University of Iowa, March 5-7, 2009.
Presented “Pragmatic Scholarship” at Harvard University, September 27, 2007
Lectured on “Aspects of a Critical Cinema” as part of the Art and Art History Lecture Series at Colgate University, April 4, 2007.
Interviewed by Michael Sicinski (“Interviewing the Interviewer: Scott MacDonald’s Critical Cinema”) for Cinema Scope, no. 28 (Fall 2006), pp. 27-32.
Presented “Transnationality As Form” at “Transcinema,” a symposium held at Colgate University, November 9, 2006
Keynote presenter at “The Place of Water in the World: Ritual, Beauty, and the Environment,” a symposium held at Mt. Holyoke College, March 31-April 2, 2005.
Presenter at GLORIA! The Legacy of Hollis Frampton. Conference held at Princeton University, November 5-6, 2004.
Plenary presenter at North American Interdisciplinary Conference on Environmental Community, hosted by the Center for Environmental Arts and Humanities, University of Nevada-Reno, February 10-12, 2000.
Presented “Beginning of the End/End of the Beginning: The Idea of Nature in Early American Cinema,” as part of series, “Lovers of Cinema,” a travelling exhibition curated by Bruce Posner, at the Howe Library, Hanover, New Hampshire, November 29, 1999.
Interviewed by Lynn Sachs for The Independent, vol. 21, no. 10 (December 1998), pp. 37-39.
As featured guest of the 1995 James River Film Festival of the Moving Image in Richmond, Virginia, I presented three lectures: “Geographic Dyslexia: What Are We Doing Here?” and “Text As Image” (at Virginia Commonwealth University) and “Landscape Painting/Landscape Film” (at the Virginia Museum of Art), and served on a panel devoted to avant-garde film and issues of reception, April 6-9, 1995.
Member of the Board of Trustees of International Film Seminars (the organization that sponsors the annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar), 1991-1995.
Featured speaker, on teaching avant-garde film and video in the high school classroom, at “Shaping the Vision”: the 46th Convention of the New York State Art Teachers Association, November 2, 1994.
“Macrocosmic Microcosms: The Digital/Laser/Videos of Raphael Montanez Ortiz and the films of Martin Arnold,” presented at the Visible Evidence II Conference at the University of Southern California, August, 1994. Also organized a sidebar of screening of recent independent films.
“Avant-Garde Meets Third Cinema,” lecture presented at University of New Mexico, April 2, 1994.
Member of the Board of Directors of Sculpture Space, Inc, Utica, New York, 1992-1994.
“New Approaches to Motion Study,” lecture presented at Colgate University, November 17, 1993.
“Inter-Nationality and Multi-Ethnicity: Peter Watkins The Journey and Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing,” paper presented at the first Visible Evidence Conference, Duke University, September, 1993.
“Empathy: A Model for Crossing Ethnic and Gender Boundaries in Undergraduate Courses in Film, Art, and Literature,” a paper presented at the University Film and Video Conference, Temple University, August, 1993.
“Cinema As Motion Study,” presented at San Francisco Cinematheque, December 6, 1992; and at Centre Georges Pompidou as part of “Manifest: 30 ans de creation cinematographique en perspective,” a month-long celebration of the film collection housed at Centre Georges Pompidou.
Review of Lauren Rabinowitz’s Points of Resistance (University of Illinois Press, 1991), Film Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 4 (Summer 1992), pp. 57-58.
“Cinema Before Film,” a review of Richard D. Altick’s The Shows of London (Harvard University Press, 1978), Millennium Film Journal, no. 23-24 (Winter 1990-91), pp. 142-153.
Review of Lucy Fischer’s Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and Women’s Cinema (Princeton University Press, 1989), Film Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 4 (Summer 1990), pp. 31-33.
“Expanding the Audience for Critical Cinema,” paper presented at the University Film and Video Association Conference, Ithaca College, June 1990. Also Chaired a panel and organized screenings for the conference.
“Critical Uses of Avant-Garde Cinema,” paper presented at the International Experimental Film Congress, Toronto, Ontario, May, 1989.
“Avant-Garde Film: Cinema As Discourse,” paper presented at the Society for Cinema Studies/University Film/Video Association Conference, Montana State University, July, 1988.
“Cinema 16: Reel Film Criticism,” paper delivered at the 75th College Art Association Conference in Boston, February 12, 1987.
Member of Film Panel of New York State Council on the Arts, 1984-86.
Review of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison’s The Lagoon Cycle, Artforum, vol. 24, no. 2 (October 1985), pp. 130-131.
Review of Wynstan Curnow and Robert Horrocks, eds., Figures of Motion: Len Lye/Selected Writings (Aukland and Oxford University Presses, 1984), The Independent, vol. 8 (September 1985), pp. 15-17.
Review of “Hollis Frampton: Recollections/Recreations,” Artforum, vol. 23, no. 8 (April 1985), pp. 99-100.
Review of “Michael Snow: Walking Woman Works, 1961-67,” Artforum, vol. 22, no. 9 (May 1984), pp. 91-92.
“Thoughts on Recent Approaches to Avant-Garde Film,” paper presented at the Cinema Histories, Cinema Practices II Conference, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, November 11, 1982.
Review of the Fifteenth Independent Filmmakers Exhibition, Afterimage, vol. 8, no. 9 (April 1981), p. 5.
Interviewed by Michelle Fleming for Lightstruck, the publication of the Experimental Film Coalition (Chicago), vol. 7, no. 4 (Summer 1981), pp. 4-9.
Lecture/screening, “Minimal Film: Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket,” presented at SWAMP (Southwest Arts Media Project) in El Paso, Texas; and at the Pasadena Filmforum, August, 1981.
Review of Joseph A. Gomez’s Peter Watkins (Twayne, 1980), Film Quarterly, vol. 33 (Summer 1980), pp. 25-26.
Review of Whitney Museum Conference, “Researches and Investigations into Film: Its Origins and the Avant-Garde,” Afterimage, vol. 7, no. 6 (January 1980), p. 3.
“A Missing Link—Some Alternative Relationships between Literature and Film,” presented at the Salisbury Literature, History, Film Conference, Salisbury State University, June, 1980.
“The Avant-Garde: Why Fight It?” presented at the Society for Cinema Studies Conference, Syracuse University, March, 1980.
From 1976-1978 I published an annotated listing of film events presented by arts organizations in Central New York, first as the broadside, Upstate Independent Film Newsletter, then as a column in Cinemedia Newsletter (Rochester, New York).
“Why Peter Watkins’ Punishment Park Makes Audiences Uncomfortable,” presented at the Purdue Conference on Film, April, 1977.
“The Automobile Windshield As Movie Screen: Some Implications for Film-Goers (and Drivers),” paper presented at the Northeast Modern Language Association Conference, University of Pittsburgh, April, 1977.
“Less IS More: A Discussion of Larry Gottheim’s Fog Line,” paper presented at the Northeast Modern Language Association Conference, University of Vermont, April, 1976.