Description
Book SynopsisVisionary Film has remained the standard text on the American avant-garde since the publication of its first edition in 1974. It has been hailed as the most complete work written on the exciting, often puzzling and always controversial genre of American avant-garde film. In this book P. Adams Sitney discusses the principle genres and the major filmmakers since Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid made their dreamlike film Meshes of the Afternoon in 1943. Sitney also identifies the emergence and flowering of a new genre, which he calls Menippean Satire. This edition also includes a chapter on the films of Gregory J. Markopoulos which had been dropped from the second edition.
Trade ReviewPraise for previous editions of Visionary Film: Without question it is the first such book on the avant-garde film--the first one that probes this field in such depth, with such perspective and vision, with such insight and intelligence. * Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice *
Table of Contents1: Meshes of the Afternoon 2: Ritual and Nature 3: The Potted Psalm 4: The Magus 5: From Trance to Myth 6: The Lyrical Film 7: Major Mythopoeia 8: Absolute Animation 9: The Graphic Cinema: European Perspectives 10: Apocalypses and Picaresques 11: Recovered Innocence 12: Structural Film 13: The Seventies 14: The End of the 20th Century Notes Index
