Preface

As other writers have shown, the mainstream of film theory and criticism offers several modes of analysis suited to the study of avant-garde film. In the Introduction, I mention a few examples that seem most noteworthy. On the whole, however, these critical approaches seem ill-equipped to examine the specifically visual aspects of avant-garde film. Perhaps this is due in part to innate differences between critics' discursive thought and film artists' "visual thinking," but surely it is also due to theoretical presuppositions accompanying what Martin Jay has called "the anti-visual discourse of 20th century French thought," which has profoundly influenced film theory since the 1960s.^[1] My goal is not to critique that discourse but to open (in some cases, reopen) lines of inquiry suitable to a pro-visual discourse, in which avant-garde filmmakers are already engaged and to which film theorists and critics should be able to make significant contributions of their own.^[2] I will return to this issue in the Introduction, and each succeeding chapter will elaborate one or more of its implications.

By emphasizing the visual aesthetics of avant-garde film, I have avoided the tangle of historical and theoretical issues involved in defining the term avant-garde and applying it to film and other media. For my present purpose, experimenting with the medium and opposing the dominant film industry suffice to make a filmmaker avant-garde—though I readily acknowledge that there are more rigorous ways of defining the term, just as there are other terms (for example, experimental, underground, visionary,

personal, poetic, pure, free, independent, alternative) that have been applied to the films I call avant-garde.^[3] More to the point, the filmmakers discussed here were selected not because they can be labeled avant-garde, but because they took advantage of the avant-garde spirit of experimentation and opposition to explore the visual dimensions of film. They are, one might say, visual artists by choice and avant-garde only by necessity.

They are also artists with well-established reputations within North American avant-garde film. In fact, I have limited my detailed discussion to the work of a few major figures (for reasons explained in the Introduction); consequently, I have left out many fine filmmakers—including some from whom I have learned a great deal about looking at and thinking about avant-garde films. I expect to write about other avant-garde filmmakers in the future, and I will be delighted if other writers draw upon the arguments set forth in this book to discuss filmmakers I have not included. May a provisual discourse on avant-garde film flourish!

Another matter requiring comment is the use of frame enlargements (most of which I made myself) to illustrate passages of films. Although every effort has been made to reproduce the complete frame, it was impossible to avoid slight variations in size and shape introduced in the process of going from film frames to photographs to reproductions on the printed page. Moreover, not only were most of the original images in color rather than gradations of gray, but they were never intended to be seen as photographs in the first place. At best, frame enlargements are faint shadows or slight, fossilized imprints of the film's living, luminous presence on the screen. They may jog the visual memory of readers who have seen the films projected, but for readers who have not seen the films, they can do little more than hint at what the films really look like.

Finally, although many of the films discussed here have soundtracks, the aural experience they provide is not examined in detail. Certainly this is an injustice, not only to the films in question but also to the avant-garde film movement in general, which has produced many examples of complex and evocative uses of sound and sound-image relationships. To do justice to the aural aesthetics of avant-garde film, though, I would have to adopt a different critical approach, one applicable to a different channel of transmission, a different mode of perception, and (on the whole) a different selection of films for close inspection. That prospect remains open and I hope inviting to other investigators. For me, however, vision and the visual aesthetics of avant-garde film demand prior consideration.