What do you think?
Rate this book
Abstract Film and Beyond
"Malcolm Le Grice, an important experimental filmmaker from England, film journalist for Studio International, and teacher ... gives us a lucid account, both historical and theoretical, of the main preoccupations of abstract filmmakers....
"Le Grice begins with a painter, Cezanne, to show how his preoccupation with pictorial space is a key to any understanding of the notion of abstraction. He goes on to discuss the Futurists' cinema, the early abstract film experiments by Eggeling, Duchamp and others in Germany and France of the '20s, the West Coast filmmakers of the '40s, and a stimulating view of the experimental film movement after WW II, including the works of Brakhage, Snow, Gidal and Sharits."
- Art Direction
"Whether or not one agrees with Le Grice's valuation of an alternate cinema, Abstract Film and Beyond clearly demonstrates that the cinema, that great twentieth-century art, is no mere entertainment, but an event of tremendous importance and implication."
- The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
"Le Grice begins with a painter, Cezanne, to show how his preoccupation with pictorial space is a key to any understanding of the notion of abstraction. He goes on to discuss the Futurists' cinema, the early abstract film experiments by Eggeling, Duchamp and others in Germany and France of the '20s, the West Coast filmmakers of the '40s, and a stimulating view of the experimental film movement after WW II, including the works of Brakhage, Snow, Gidal and Sharits."
- Art Direction
"Whether or not one agrees with Le Grice's valuation of an alternate cinema, Abstract Film and Beyond clearly demonstrates that the cinema, that great twentieth-century art, is no mere entertainment, but an event of tremendous importance and implication."
- The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
160 pages, Paperback
First published March 30, 1982
6 people are currently reading
88 people want to read
About the author
Malcolm Le Grice
5 books2 followersMalcolm Le Grice was a British artist known for his avant-garde film work.
The British Film Institute claimed that he was "probably the most influential modernist filmmaker in British cinema".
The British Film Institute claimed that he was "probably the most influential modernist filmmaker in British cinema".
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 26, 2008
It's strange. I'm an abstract filmmaker from time to time, an experimental one, an underground one, a materialist one, a structuralist one, a documentarian, someone outside of previously existing categories. I take this stuff seriously: the history, the theory, the sense of purpose.. - &, yet, I'm amazed that such bks exist! I'm amazed that MIT wd publish such a thing. It's so SERIOUS & so outside the concerns of most people. Seeing it published is like seeing an endangered species nourished by more than one person. I understand why I care but I'm not so sure I understand why enuf other people do so to enable this bk & all the others that I have that're like it to exist. Having seen the Carnegie Museum of Art Film & Video Department winked out of existence & the Andy Warhol Museum Film & Video Department debilitated almost beyond existence, it's almost as if I expect bks like this to just disappear - never to be reprinted - embodying a lost knowledge.
Displaying 1 of 1 review