Friday, January 20, 2006

Me and Sitney, On the Rail

P_adams_now As Exhibit A, tending to show that law school and film criticism aren't entirely incompatible, I offer my interview with film scholar P. Adams Sitney, appearing in the current issue of The Brooklyn Rail.  Sitney is among the greatest scholars of American avant-garde film, and the author of a still-definitive 1974 book on the genre, Visionary Film.  In the interview, we discuss, inter alia, the unusual longevity of his book in relation to the (sorry) state of contemporary scholarship of avant-garde film.  And Sitney displays a touch of his legendary wit (abundantly on display in his long-ago Millennium Film Workshop debate with Malcolm LeGrice, Narrative Illusion vs. Structural Realism). 



PasjonasI close with an image of a (very) young Sitney, standing to the left of Jonas Mekas.  Sitney "The Kid," indeed!



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