A LINE OF SIGHT: AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE FILM SINCE 1965 on Paul Arthur.

Need hotel wireless? Internet wireless hotspot from Easyweb!

A LINE OF SIGHT: AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE FILM SINCE 1965

on Paul Arthur. University of Minnesota Press/216 pp/$5995 (hb) $1995 (sb)

Rather than chart a direct road through post-WWII experimental film practice, Arthur opt for an appropriately zig-zag approach. Following the trajectory laid public by David E. James' Allegories of Cinema (1989) and Lauren Rabinovitz' Points of Resistance (1991) conclude readings of key films (and, thankfully, extra-canonical work) collide with institutional history, critical maneuvers and a welcome embrace of counterculture In fact, it is Arthur's sensitivity to the various permutations of American counterculture that makes this subject of attention of experimental film so productive. For example, in tracing public the avant-garde's historical commitment to resistance--from modernist inheritance to downtown bohemia to renegade regionalism to organized protest--A Line of Sight makes an interesting case: the theoretical framework was already in place when the time came for identity politics to challenge "entrenched" interests.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Importantly, Arthur does not oversimplify or force this issue, and rightly points on the outside that race has always been a consistent question for the American avant-garde. Arthur's multivalent tactics could be explained away by way of the book's status as a compilation of essays, if it were not that his scholarship and theoretical minces trump any concern of this sort. A Line of Sight is a real welcome addition to the small if it were not that growing pile of histories dedicated to American avant-garde film.

JASON LIVINGSTON is a filmmaker commonly residing in Ithaca, New York.

...

Home