• Acknowledgments Introduction Patricia Zimmermann: Imagining a History of the Flaherty Seminar Scott MacDonald: The Logistics of Transcribing and Editing Flaherty Discussions
• 1. The Flaherty Way
• 1959 Francis Flaherty--opening remarks at the Seminar
• 2. A Seminar, 1955-1959
• 1958 Robert Gardner with John Marshall--on The Hunters (1957)
• 3. An Organization, 1960-1969
• 1963 Francis Flaherty-on Nanook of the North (1922) and Moana (1926)
• 1967 Fred Wiseman-on Titicut Follies (1967)
• 1968 Willard Van Dyke--opening remarks at the Seminar
• 1968 Jim McBride and L. M. Kit Carson-on David Holzman's Diary (1967)
• 1969 Michael Snow-on Wavelength (1967)
• 4. Politics, Cultural and Formal, 1970-1980
• 1970 Hollis Frampton-on Zorns Lemma (1970)
• 1970 Erik Barnouw, Paul Ronder, and Barbara Van Dyke-on Hiroshima-Nagasaki, August
• 1945 (1970)
• 1977 Barbara Kopple and Hart Perry-on Harlan County USA (1976)
• 5. Shock of the New, 1981-1989
• 1981 Ed Pincus-on Diaries (1971-1976) (c. 1980)
• 1983 Trinh T. Minh-ha-on Reassemblage (1982)
• 1984 Bruce Conner-on Ten Second Film (1965), Permian Strata (1969), Mongoloid (1978), and America Is Waiting (1981)
• 1987 Peter Watkins and others-on The Journey (1987)
• 1987 Su Friedrich-on Damned If You Don't (1987)
• 6. Crises, 1990-1999
• 1990 Marlon Riggs-on Tongues Untied (1989)
• 1991 William Greaves-on Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1972)
• 1992 Ken Jacobs-on XCXHXEXRXRXIXEXSX (many performances after 1980)
• 1992 Kazuo Hara-on Extreme Private Eros (1974)
• 1994 Nick DeoCampo-on Revolutions Happen Like Refrains in a Song (1987), Memories of Old Manila (1993), and Isaak (1993)
• 1994 Mani Kaul-on Uski Roti ("A Day's Bread, " 1969) and Dhrupad (1982)
• 1995 Craig Baldwin-on Sonic Outlaws (1995)
• 7. The Brand, 2000-2015
• 2000 Sergey Dvortsevoy-on Paradise (1995)-- Vicky Funari-on Paulina (1998).
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This is the inspiring story of The Flaherty, one of the oldest continuously running nonprofit media arts institutions in the world, which has shaped the development of independent film, video, and emerging forms in the United States over the past 60 years. Combining the words of legendary independent filmmakers with a detailed history of The Flaherty, Patricia R. Zimmermann and Scott MacDonald showcase its history and legacy, amply demonstrating how the relationships created at the annual Flaherty seminar have been instrumental in transforming American media history. Moving through the decades, each chapter opens with a detailed history of the organization by Zimmermann, who traces the evolution of The Flaherty from a private gathering of filmmakers to a small annual convening, to today's ever-growing nexus of filmmakers, scholars, librarians, producers, funders, distributors, and others associated with international independent cinema. MacDonald expands each chapter by giving voice to the major figures in the evolution of independent media through transcriptions of key discussions galvanized by films shown at The Flaherty. The discussions feature Frances Flaherty, Robert Gardner, Fred Wiseman, Willard Van Dyke, Jim McBride, Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton, Erik Barnouw, Barbara Kopple, Ed Pincus, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Bruce Conner, Peter Watkins, Su Friedrich, Marlon Riggs, William Greaves, Ken Jacobs, Kazuo Hara, Mani Kaul, Craig Baldwin, Bahman Ghobadi, Eyal Sivan, and many others.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction A Tentative Overview of Boston-Area Documentary Filmmaking * Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary * Pragmatism: Learning from Experience * The Mission of American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary: The Cambridge Turn * Subjects for Further Research * Acknowledgments
• 1. Lorna and John Marshall Beginnings: Lorna Marshall and First Film * John Marshall: The Hunters * Idylls of the !Kung * Pedagogy * Expulsion from Eden: Bitter Melons and N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman * The Pittsburgh Police Films and Brakhage's Eyes * Putting Down the Camera and Picking Up the Shovel * The Road Taken: A Kalahari Family * A Process in Time
• 2. Robert Gardner East Coast/West Coast: Early Experiments * Gardner and the Marshalls * Dead Birds * The Experience of Filmmaking as Thought Process * Robert Fulton: Reality's Invisible--"Serious Playing Around" * Screening Room: Midnight Movies * City Symphony: Forest of Bliss * The Return of the Repressed: Ika Hands * Still Journeying On: Unfinished Examinations of a Life * Studio7Arts: Sharon Lockhart's Double Tide and Robert Fenz's Correspondence
• 3. Timothy Asch Dodoth Morning and the Ethnographic Deadpan * Asch and the Yanomamo * The Ax Fight
• 4. Ed Pincus and the Emergence of Personal Documentary The Miriam Weinstein Quartet and Richard P. Rogers's Elephants: Fragments of an Argument * Ed Pincus's Diaries (1971--1976) * Alfred Guzzetti: Family Portrait Sittings * Guzzetti: It's a Small World * Guzzetti: Time Exposure
• 5. Alfred Guzzetti and Personal Cinema Air * Experimental Video: "Language Lessons" * Scylla and Charybdis * Still Point
• 6. Ross McElwee Finding a Muse: Charleen * Finding a Voice: Ann Schaetzel's Breaking and Entering and McElwee's Backyard * Doppleganger: Sherman's March * Nesting Dolls: Time Indefinite * On the Road Again: Six O'Clock News * Occupational Hazards: Bright Leaves * Orpheus: In Paraguay and Photographic Memory
• 7. Robb Moss Riverdogs: A Possible Eden * The Tourist: "Freelance Editing" * Voyage of Life: The Same River Twice
• 8. Panorama: Other Approaches to Personal Documentary Steve Ascher and Jeanne Jordan: Families in Transition * Michel Negroponte: Getting Involved * Leacock and Lalonde * The Subject Rebels: Nina Davenport's Films and Ed Pincus and Lucia Small's The Axe in the Attic * The Political Is the Personal: John Gianvito's Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind and Jeff Daniel Silva's Balkan Rhapsodies * Alexander Olch's The Windmill Movie: "This Little Seance of Flickering Light" * Amie Siegel's DDR/DDR
• 9. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Sensory Ethnography Ilisa Barbash, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, and Sweetgrass * "Sheeple": Castaing-Taylor's Audio-Video Installations * The Sensory Ethnography Lab: J. P. Sniadecki, Stephanie Spray, Verena Paravel, and Leviathan Epilogue Appendix: Film Sources Notes Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

"American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary" is a critical history of American filmmakers crucial to the development of ethnographic film and personal documentary. The Boston and Cambridge area is notable for nurturing these approaches to documentary film via institutions such as the MIT Film Section and the Film Study Center, the Carpenter Center and the Visual and Environmental Studies Department at Harvard. Scott MacDonald uses pragmatism's focus on empirical experience as a basis for measuring the groundbreaking achievements of such influential filmmakers as John Marshall, Robert Gardner, Timothy Asch, Ed Pincus, Miriam Weinstein, Alfred Guzzetti, Ross McElwee, Robb Moss, Nina Davenport, Steve Ascher and Jeanne Jordan, Michel Negroponte, John Gianvito, Alexander Olch, Amie Siegel, Ilisa Barbash, and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. By exploring the cinematic, personal, and professional relationships between these accomplished filmmakers, MacDonald shows how a pioneering, engaged, and uniquely cosmopolitan approach to documentary developed over the past half century.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• 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 Muller Sharon Lockhart Jennifer Todd Reeves On Chronic and The Time We Killed Kano Shiho Ernie Gehr Filmography Bibliography Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

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.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction
• 1. The Garden in the Machine Larry Gottheim's Fog Line, Thomas Cole's The Oxbow, J.{ths}J. Murphy's Sky Blue Water Light Sign, Panoramas
• 2. Voyages of Life Thomas Cole's The Voyage of Life, Larry Gottheim's Horizons
• 3. Avant-Gardens Kenneth Anger's Eaux d'artifice, Marie Menken's Glimpse of the Garden, Carolee Schneemann's Fuses, Stan Brakhage's The Garden of Earthly Delights, Marjorie Keller's The Answering Furrow, Anne Charlotte Robertson's Melon Patches, Or Reasons to Go on Living, Rose Lowder's Ecological Cinema
• 4. Re-envisioning the American West Babette Mangolte's The Sky on Location, James Benning's North on Evers, Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, Ellen Spiro's Roam Sweet Home
• 5. From the Sublime to the Vernacular Jan DeBont's Twister and George Kuchar's Weather Diaries
• 6. The City as Motion Picture The New York City Symphony: Rudy Burckhardt's New York Films, Weegee's Weegee's New York, Francis Thompson's N.Y., N.Y., Marie Menken's Go! Go! Go! Hilary Harris's Organism, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing Panorama, the San Francisco City Film: Frank Stauffacher's Sausalito and Notes on the Port of St. Francis, Bruce Baillie's Castro Street, Michael Rudnick's Panorama, Ernie Gehr's Eureka and Side/Walk/Shuttle Coda--Deconstruction/Reconstruction: Pat O'Neill's Water and Power and Eugene Martin's Invisible Cities
• 7. The Country in the City Central Park, Jonas Mekas's Walden, William Greaves's Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
• 8. Rural (and Urban) Hours Hollis Frampton's Zorns Lemma, Robert Huot's One Year and Rolls 1971, Nathaniel Dorsky's Hours for Jerome, Peter Hutton's Landscape (for Manon) and New York Portrait, Part I
• 9. Expulsion from the Garden Thomas Cole's The Garden of Eden and Expulsion from the Garden, Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust, Carl Franklin's One False Move, J.{ths}J. Murphy's Print Generation and Horicon
• 10. Satan's National Park Bruce Conner's Crossroads, Werner Herzog's Lessons of Darkness, Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, James Benning's Deseret and Four Corners
• 11. Benedictions/New Frontiers Chick Strand's Kristallnacht, Stan Brakhage's Commingled Containers, Andrew Noren's Imaginary Light, Leighton Pierce's 50 Feet of String, David Gatten's What the Water Said, nos. 1-3 Appendix: Distribution Sources for Films and Videos Notes Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The Garden in the Machine explores the evocations of place, and particularly American place, that have become so central to the representational and narrative strategies of alternative and mainstream film and video. Scott MacDonald contextualizes his discussion with a wide-ranging and deeply informed analysis of the depiction of place in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, painting, and photography. Accessible and engaging, this book examines the manner in which these films represent nature and landscape in particular, and location in general. It offers us both new readings of the films under consideration and an expanded sense of modern film history. Among the many antecedents to the films and videos discussed here are Thomas Cole's landscape painting, Thoreau's Walden, Olmsted and Vaux's Central Park, and Eadweard Muybridge's panoramic photographs of San Francisco. MacDonald analyzes the work of many accomplished avant-garde filmmakers: Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, James Benning, Stan Brakhage, Nathaniel Dorsky, Hollis Frampton, Ernie Gehr, Larry Gottheim, Robert Huot, Peter Hutton, Marjorie Keller, Rose Lowder, Marie Menken, J.J. Murphy, Andrew Noren, Pat O'Neill, Leighton Pierce, Carolee Schneemann, and Chick Strand. He also examines a variety of recent commercial feature films, as well as independent experiments in documentary and such contributions to independent video history as George Kuchar's Weather Diaries and Ellen Spiro's Roam Sweet Home. MacDonald reveals the spiritual underpinnings of these works and shows how issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and class are conveyed as filmmakers attempt to discover forms of Edenic serenity within the Machine of modern society. Both personal and scholarly, The Garden in the Machine will be an invaluable resource for those interested in investigating and experiencing a broader spectrum of cinema in their teaching, in their research, and in their lives.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
"The Garden in the Machine" explores the evocations of place, and particularly American place, that have become so central to the representational and narrative strategies of alternative and mainstream film and video. Scott MacDonald contextualizes his discussion with a wide-ranging and deeply informed analysis of the depiction of place in 19th and 20th-century literature, painting and photography. Accessible and engaging, this book examines the manner in which these films represent nature and landscape in particular and location in general. It offers us both new readings of the films under consideration and an expanded sense of modern film history. Among the many antecedents to the films and videos discussed here are Thomas Cole's landscape painting, Thoreau's "Walden", Olmsted and Vaux's Central Park, and Eadweard Muybridge's panoramic photographs of San Francisco. MacDonald analyzes the work of many accomplished avant-garde filmmakers: Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, James Benning, Stan Brakhage, Nathaniel Dorsky, Hollis Frampton, Ernie Gehr, Larry Gottheim, Robert Huot, Peter Hutton, Marjorie Keller, Rose Lowder, Marie Menken, J.J. Murphy, Andrew Noren, Pat O'Neill, Leighton Pier.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Amos Vogel
• William Greaves
• Jordan Belson (and collaborator Stephen Beck)
• Arthur Peleshian
• Charles Burnett
• Hara Kazuo
• At the Flaherty: Peter Watkins, Ken Jacobs, 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
• Aline Mere
• Cauleen Smith
• John Porter
• Raphael Montanez Ortiz
• Martin Arnold
• Ken and Flo Jacobs
• Sally Potter.

"A Critical Cinema 3" continues Scott MacDonald's compilation of personal interviews and public discussions with major contributors to independent filmmaking and film awareness. An informative exchange with Amos Vogel, whose Cinema 16 Society drew American filmgoers into a broader sense of film history, is followed by interviews reflecting a wide range of approaches to filmmaking. Sally Potter discusses her popular feature, Orlando, in relation to the experimental work that preceded it, and Canadian independent John Porter argues compellingly for small-gauge, Super-8mm filmmaking.Ken Jacobs discusses the "Nervous System" apparatus with which he transforms old film footage into new forms of motion picture art; Jordan Belson describes his Vortex Concerts, ancestors of modern laser light shows; and Elias Merhige talks about going beneath the "rational structure of meaning" in Begotten. "A Critical Cinema 3" presents independent cinema as an international and multiethnic phenomenon. MacDonald interviews filmmakers from Sweden, France, Italy, Austria, Armenia, India, the Philippines, and Japan and examines the work of African Americans, European Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanics. He provides an introductory overview of each interviewee, as well as detailed film/videographies and selected bibliographies. With its predecessors, "A Critical Cinema" (California, 1988) and "A Critical Cinema 2" (California, 1992), this is the most extensive, in-depth exploration of independent cinema available in English.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Yoko Ono. Mini Film Scripts
• William Greaves. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One: Director's Early Notes Prior to and during Production in the Spring of
• 1968. Transcript of Excerpt from Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One. Program Notes for Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
• Hollis Frampton. Narration from
• Part 1 of Zorns Lemma. Notes on Zorns Lemma. Narration from
• Part 3 of Zorns Lemma. Text of Poetic Justice. Text of Gloria!
• Laura Mulvey/Peter Wollen. Script of Riddles of the Sphinx
• James Benning. "Respect your flag ..."
• from Grand Opera. Script for "New York 1980"
• Michael Snow. Text of So Is This
• Peter Rose. Introduction to Pleasures of the Text. Text of Secondary Currents
• Morgan Fisher. Script of Standard Gauge
• Trinh T. Minh-ha. Script of Reassemblage. Script of Naked Spaces
• Living Is Round
• Su Friedrich. (Script) for a Film without Images. Text of Gently Down the Stream. Script of Sink or Swim
• Ann Marie Fleming. Transcript of New Shoes: An Interview in Exactly 5 Minutes. Transcript and Text from You Take Care Now
• Yvonne Rainer. Script of Privilege.

'Ask audience to cut the part of the image on the screen that they don't like. Supply scissors' - Yoko Ono, Tokyo, June 1964. A dazzling range of unconventional film scripts and texts, many published for the first time, make up Scott MacDonald's newest collection. Illustrated with nearly 100 film stills, this fascinating book is at once a reference work of film history and an unparalleled sampling of experimental 'language art'. It contributes to the very dissipation of boundaries between cinematic, literary, and artistic expression thematized in the films themselves. Each text and script is introduced and contextualized by MacDonald; a filmography and a bibliography round out the volume. This is a readable - often quite funny - literature that investigates differences between seeing and reading. Represented are avant-garde classics such as Hollis Frampton's Poetic Justice and Zorns Lemma and Morgan Fisher's Standard Gauge, and William Greaves' recently rediscovered Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One. Michael Snow turns film loose on language in "So Is This"; Peter Rose turns language loose on theory in "Pressures of the Text". Some of the most influential feminist filmscripts of recent decades - Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen's "Riddles of the Sphinx", Su Friedrich's "Gently Down the Stream", Trinh T. Minh-ha's "Reassemblage", Yvonne Rainer's "Privilege" - confirm this book's importance for readers in gender and cultural studies as well as for filmmakers and admirers of experimental writing, independent cinema, and the visual arts in general.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

This sequel to "A Critical Cinema" offers a new collection of interviews with independent filmmakers that is a feast for film fans and film historians. Scott MacDonald reveals the sophisticated thinking of these artists regarding film, politics, and contemporary gender issues. The interviews explore the careers of Robert Breer, Trinh T. Minh-ha, James Benning, Su Friedrich, and Godfrey Reggio. Yoko Ono discusses her cinematic collaboration with John Lennon, Michael Snow talks about his music and films, Anne Robertson describes her cinematic diaries, Jonas Mekas and Bruce Baillie recall the New York and California avant-garde film culture. The selection has a particularly strong group of women filmmakers, including Yvonne Rainer, Laura Mulvey, and Lizzie Borden. Other notable artists are Anthony McCall, Andrew Noren, Ross McElwee, Anne Severson, and Peter Watkins.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)