A Critical Cinema 5: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers / Edition 1

by Scott MacDonald

Overview

A Critical Cinema 5 is the fifth volume in Scott MacDonald's Critical Cinema series, the most extensive, in-depth exploration of independent cinema available in English. In this new set of interviews, MacDonald engages filmmakers in detailed discussions of their films and of the personal experiences and political and theoretical currents that have shaped their work. The interviews are arranged to express the remarkable diversity of modern independent cinema and the interactive community of filmmakers that has dedicated itself to producing forms of cinema that critique conventional media.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520245952
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	01/30/2006
Series:	Critical Cinema Ser. , #5
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	461
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Scott MacDonald is the author of the four previous volumes of A Critical Cinema and The Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films about Place (2001), all from California.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Kenneth Anger
Tony Conrad

ON THE SIXTIES
Nathaniel Dorsky
Peggy Ahwesh
Alan Berliner
Robb Moss
Phil Solomon
James Benning

ON HIS WESTERNS
J. Leighton Pierce
Matthias Müller
Sharon Lockhart
Jennifer Todd Reeves
On Chronic and The Time We Killed
Kano Shiho
Ernie Gehr

Filmography
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

As he did in the first volume of this projected trilogy, MacDonald profiles and interviews 19 independent filmmakers whose works interrogate and criticize conventional film in a variety of ways, whether by fracturing conventional narrative or by eschewing traditional plots altogether in favor of more impressionistic, visual concerns. MacDonald has used this volume to fill in crucial gaps from the first, including such prominent pioneers of independent film as Michael Snow, Robert Breer (who speaks amusingly about his disastrous attempt to go mainstream by making a documentary for David Brinkley for network television) and Bruce Baillie, in order to give ``a chronological overview of independent filmmaking since 1950, especially in North America.'' Equally important, he has given over much of this volume to women filmmakers, including such seminal figures as Yoko Ono (who speaks at length about her early work with the dadaist Fluxus group and her film collaborations with John Lennon) and Yvonne Rainer. MacDonald is a near-ideal interviewer--well-informed, concise and unobtrusive--and his subjects are good talkers. The filmographies and bibliographies included are especially welcome. The resulting book is a valuable contribution to the history of independent film in the U.S. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

With its antecedents, A Critical Cinema (Univ. of California, 1988) and A Critical Cinema 2 (Univ. of California, 1992), this book gives a detailed look at independent filmmaking. The filmmakers in these volumes strive to create new kinds of imagery, narratives, and audiences that challenge Hollywood norms. Here, MacDonald (film studies and American literature, Utica Coll.) expands the geopolitical range of the previous volumes, treating independent filmmaking as an international and multiethnic undertaking. Interviews with filmmakers from such countries as Armenia (Arthur Peleshian), Austria (Valie Export, Martin Arnold), India (Mani Kaul), and the Philippines (Nick Deocampo) are supplemented by a concise, informative overview of each filmmaker, together with film/videographies and selected bibliographies. British filmmaker Sally Potter (Orlando) is singled out for extensive attention. As with its predecessors, this volume belongs in all undergraduate and research libraries that support film studies.Neal Baker, Ball State Univ. Lib., Muncie, Ind.

Library Journal