Eyes Upside Down: Visionary Filmmakers and the Heritage of Emerson

by P. Adams Sitney

Sitney analyzes in detail the work of eleven American avant-garde filmmakers as heirs to the aesthetics of exhilaration and innovative vision articulated by Ralph Waldo Emerson and explored by John Cage, Charles Olson and Gertrude Stein. The films discussed span the sixty years since the Second World War. With three chapters each devoted to Stan Brakhage and Robert Beavers, two each to Hollis Frampton and Jonas Mekas, and single chapters on Marie Menken, Ian Hugo, Andrew Noren, Warren Sonbert, Su Friedrich, Ernie Gehr, and Abigail Child, Eyes Upside Down is the fruit of Sitney's lifelong study of visionary aspirations in the American avant-garde cinema.

Genres: Film, History

417 pages, Paperback

First published April 18, 2008

About the author

P. Adams Sitney was a historian of American avant-garde cinema. He was known as the author of Visionary Film, one of the first books on the history of experimental film in the United States.