SERIES CATALOG
"Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1893-1941"

Unseen Cinema catalog features 30 essays, articles, and documents and 65 annotated photographs. Authors are scholars, critics, and filmmakers whose knowledge of the early avant-garde derives from either direct experience as a participant or years of scholarly research. Many hard-to-find photographs and sources detail the first decades of American experimental cinema in the United States and abroad.

Table of Contents
Foreword—Jan-Christopher Horak
Words and Pictures—annotated photographs

1. The Grand Experiment—Bruce Posner
2. Hollywood Extras: One Tradition of 'Avant-Garde' Film in Los Angeles—David James
3. Emlen Etting: Three Films—R. Bruce Elder
4. The Attraction of Nature in Early Cinema—Scott MacDonald
5. "Le Retour á la raison": Hidden Meaning—Deke Dusinberre
6. Music for "Ballet Mécanique": 90s Technology Realizes a 20s Vision—Paul D. Lehrman
7. Sara Kathryn Arledge: "Introspection"—Terry Cannon
8. Busby Berkeley and America's Pioneer Abstract Filmmakers—Cecile Starr
9. Joseph Cornell: An Exploration of Sources—Lynda Roscoe Hartigan
10. Discussing D.W. Griffith—Jay Leyda
11. Maurice Tourneur and "The Bluebird"—Jan-Christopher Horak
12. Diva of Decadence: "Salome"—Kenneth Anger
13. W.K.L. Dickson: Pioneer Filmmaker—Paul Spehr
14. Elizabeth Woodman Wright: "Windy Ledge Farm"—Karan Sheldon & Bruce Posner
15. Robert Florey and the Hollywood Avant-Garde—Brian Taves
16. Working on "The City"—Henwar Rodakiewicz
17. Warren Newcombe: "The Enchanted City"—Stephen J. Schneider
18. My Films—J.S. Watson, Jr.
19. J.S. Watson, Jr.: "Nass River Indians"—Lynda Jessup
20. And Melville Webber—Dale Davis
21. Making "Twenty-four Dollar Island"—Robert Flaherty
22. Avant-Garde Production in America—Lewis Jacobs (excerpts)
23. Rutherford Boyd and "Parabola"—Douglas Dreishpoon
24. Notes on New Cinema of 1929 and 1930—Harry Alan Potamkin
25. Herman G. Weinberg: "Autumn Fire"—Robert A. Haller
26. Unanswered Questions: Eisenstein's "Qué Viva México!"—Herman G. Weinberg
27. My First Movie and "The Hearts of Age"—Orson Welles interviewed by Peter Bogdanovich
28. Highway 66: Montage Notes for a Documentary Film—Lewis Jacobs
29. The American Vanguard: Flux and Experience—R. Bruce Elder
30. New Artistic Process—Claire Parker and Alexandre Alexeieff

160 PAGES
ILLUSTRATED
SOFT-BOUND
ISBN 0-9628181-7-8
LIST PRICE: $15.95

10% DISCOUNT: $14.36

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Edited and annotated by Bruce Posner
Published by Anthology Film Archives

"Fascinating volume of well-chosen essays that manages to be genuinely provocative while greatly enriching our understanding and appreciation...Any reader even vaguely interested in this material would do well to seek out this volume, and the exhibition that bears its name."
—Film Quarterly, Summer 2005


"One is amazed that these beautiful jewels could lie neglected until Bruce Posner comes along and digs them up, makes new prints, and then positions them within the writ of the book and the programming and presents them all over the world. I don’t know of anyone who has done more to reveal to us the overlooked and the underrated cinema which once seen by and through his and other people's auspices certainly comes to take its preeminent place in film history."
-Stan Brakhage

Writings by
Alexandre Alexeieff
Kenneth Anger
Sara Kathryn Arledge
Peter Bogdanovich
Terry Cannon
Joseph Cornell
Dale Davis
Deke Dusinberre
R. Bruce Elder
Walker Evans
Robert Flaherty
Robert A. Haller
Lynda Roscoe Hartigan
Jan-Christopher Horak
Lewis Jacobs
David James
Lynda Jessup
Paul D. Lehrman
Jay Leyda
Scott MacDonald
Claire Parker
Bruce Posner
Harry Alan Potamkin
Henwar Rodakiewicz
Stephen Schneider
Karan Sheldon
Paul Spehr
Cecile Starr
Brian Taves
J.S. Watson, Jr.
Herman G. Weinberg
Orson Welles