P. Adams Sitney is a Professor of Visual Art at Princeton University. He has taught at Bard College, New York University, The Cooper Union, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the School of Visual Arts. He is the author of Visionary Film: The American Avan-Garde 1943-1200; Modernist Montage: The Obscurity of Vision in Film and Literature; Vital Crises in Italian Cinema; and he edited Film Culture Reader; The Essential Cinema; The Avant-Garde Film; and Stan Brakhage's Metaphors on Vision. In 1969 he co-founded Anthology Film Archives in New York.

With Eyes Upside Down, P. Adams Sitney reconfirms his position as the dean of American film historiography. His recasting of the canon as the elaboration of an Emersonian Orphism will transform our understanding of American culture as a whole, not just of its cinematic avatars. The largesse of his critical intelligence, of his erudition, and of his sensitivity to both poetry and film reaches 'peaks of perfect exhilaration' as remarkable in their own way as those in the films he illuminates.

• Introduction: Emersonian Poetics ; 1. Marie Menken and the Somatic Camera ; 2. Ian Hugo and Superimposition ; 3. Stan Brakhage's Autobiography as a Cinematic Sequence ; 4. Jonas Mekas and the Diary Film ; 5. Hollis Frampton and the Spectre of Narrative ; 6. Robert Beavers's Winged Distance/Sightless Measure: The Cycle of the Ephebe ; 7. Beavers's Second Cycle: The Past in the Present - The Present in the Past ; 8. Andrew Noren and the Open-Ended Cinematic Sequence ; 9. Ernie Gehr and the Axis of Primary Thought ; 10. Warren Sonbert's Movements in a Concerto ; 11. Brakhage and the Tales of the Tribes ; 12. Frampton's Magellan ; 13. Abigail Child: Textual Self-Reliance ; 14. Su Friedrich: "Giving Birth to Myself" ; 15. Brakhage: Meditative Cinema ; 16. Beavers's Third Cycle: The Theater of Gesture ; 17. Mekas's Retrospection ; Conclusion: Perfect Exhilaration ; Appendix: Chronology of Films

P. Adams Sitney is a Professor of Visual Art at Princeton University. He has taught at Bard College, New York University, The Cooper Union, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the School of Visual Arts. He is the author of Visionary Film: The American Avan-Garde 1943-1200; Modernist Montage: The Obscurity of Vision in Film and Literature; Vital Crises in Italian Cinema; and he edited Film Culture Reader; The Essential Cinema; The Avant-Garde Film; and Stan Brakhage's Metaphors on Vision. In 1969 he co-founded Anthology Film Archives in New York.

With Eyes Upside Down, P. Adams Sitney reconfirms his position as the dean of American film historiography. His recasting of the canon as the elaboration of an Emersonian Orphism will transform our understanding of American culture as a whole, not just of its cinematic avatars. The largesse of his critical intelligence, of his erudition, and of his sensitivity to both poetry and film reaches 'peaks of perfect exhilaration' as remarkable in their own way as those in the films he illuminates.

• Introduction: Emersonian Poetics ; 1. Marie Menken and the Somatic Camera ; 2. Ian Hugo and Superimposition ; 3. Stan Brakhage's Autobiography as a Cinematic Sequence ; 4. Jonas Mekas and the Diary Film ; 5. Hollis Frampton and the Spectre of Narrative ; 6. Robert Beavers's Winged Distance/Sightless Measure: The Cycle of the Ephebe ; 7. Beavers's Second Cycle: The Past in the Present - The Present in the Past ; 8. Andrew Noren and the Open-Ended Cinematic Sequence ; 9. Ernie Gehr and the Axis of Primary Thought ; 10. Warren Sonbert's Movements in a Concerto ; 11. Brakhage and the Tales of the Tribes ; 12. Frampton's Magellan ; 13. Abigail Child: Textual Self-Reliance ; 14. Su Friedrich: "Giving Birth to Myself" ; 15. Brakhage: Meditative Cinema ; 16. Beavers's Third Cycle: The Theater of Gesture ; 17. Mekas's Retrospection ; Conclusion: Perfect Exhilaration ; Appendix: Chronology of Films

P. Adams Sitney is a Professor of Visual Art at Princeton University. He has taught at Bard College, New York University, The Cooper Union, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the School of Visual Arts. He is the author of Visionary Film: The American Avan-Garde 1943-1200; Modernist Montage: The Obscurity of Vision in Film and Literature; Vital Crises in Italian Cinema; and he edited Film Culture Reader; The Essential Cinema; The Avant-Garde Film; and Stan Brakhage's Metaphors on Vision. In 1969 he co-founded Anthology Film Archives in New York.

With Eyes Upside Down, P. Adams Sitney reconfirms his position as the dean of American film historiography. His recasting of the canon as the elaboration of an Emersonian Orphism will transform our understanding of American culture as a whole, not just of its cinematic avatars. The largesse of his critical intelligence, of his erudition, and of his sensitivity to both poetry and film reaches 'peaks of perfect exhilaration' as remarkable in their own way as those in the films he illuminates.

• Introduction: Emersonian Poetics ; 1. Marie Menken and the Somatic Camera ; 2. Ian Hugo and Superimposition ; 3. Stan Brakhage's Autobiography as a Cinematic Sequence ; 4. Jonas Mekas and the Diary Film ; 5. Hollis Frampton and the Spectre of Narrative ; 6. Robert Beavers's Winged Distance/Sightless Measure: The Cycle of the Ephebe ; 7. Beavers's Second Cycle: The Past in the Present - The Present in the Past ; 8. Andrew Noren and the Open-Ended Cinematic Sequence ; 9. Ernie Gehr and the Axis of Primary Thought ; 10. Warren Sonbert's Movements in a Concerto ; 11. Brakhage and the Tales of the Tribes ; 12. Frampton's Magellan ; 13. Abigail Child: Textual Self-Reliance ; 14. Su Friedrich: "Giving Birth to Myself" ; 15. Brakhage: Meditative Cinema ; 16. Beavers's Third Cycle: The Theater of Gesture ; 17. Mekas's Retrospection ; Conclusion: Perfect Exhilaration ; Appendix: Chronology of Films