Table of Contents:

Introduction

Annette Michelson

Robert Gardner

Ed Pincus (and Jane Pincus, Lucia Small)

Alfred Guzzetti

Ross McElwee

Nina Davenport

Leonard Retel Helmrich

Jonathan Caouette

Pawe? Wojtasik

Michael Glawogger

Susana de Sousa Dias

Alexander Olch (on The Windmill Movie)

Amie Siegel (on DDR/DDR)

Arthur and Jennifer Smith (on Ice Bears of the Beaufort)

Betzy Bromberg (on Voluptuous Sleep)

Jen Proctor (on A Movie by Jen Proctor)

Jane Gillooly (on Suitcase of Love and Shame)

Godfrey Reggio (on Visitors)

Todd Haynes

Sensory Ethnography

Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (on In and Out of Africa and Sweetgrass)

Lucien Castaing-Taylor (on his installation work and on Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab)

Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel (on Leviathan)

Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez (on Manakamana)

Filmographies

Bibliographies

About the Author

Scott MacDonald teaches film history at Hamilton College and Harvard University. He is the author of several books, most recently, American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary.

Reviews

"A compelling achievement, Avant-Doc diagrams a new fluid geography of cinema, where traditional categories such as "experimental," "documentary," and "fiction" dissolve. The insightful, probing conversations assembled so deftly here vaporize fixed cinematic modes. These filmmakers describe cinema as a living organism, pulsating in networks of politics, arts, philosophies, teachers, literature, communities, technologies, and aesthetics." --Patricia R.
Zimmermann, author of States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracy
"Scott MacDonald's groundbreaking and seminal new volume, Avant-Doc, illuminates correspondences between avant-garde cinema and documentary through a series of compelling interviews with major independent filmmakers and noted scholar Annette Michelson. This intimate and probing follow-up to MacDonald's Critical Cinema series creates a lively and deeply personal oral history. Avant-Doc broadens our understanding of connections between avant-garde and documentary
film, while providing a rich treasure trove of research material that current and future scholars will find invaluable." --J.J. Murphy, author of The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol