[Frameworks] new book, AVANT-DOC

[Scott MacDonald]

*Dear Frameworkers,*
*Here is the Press's description of my new book, AVANT-DOC: Intersections
of Documentary and Avant-Garde Cinema. The book may be of interest for some
of you:*

*Avant-Doc*: 23 in-depth interviews exploring the intersections between
documentary and avant-garde filmmaking. Scott MacDonald reviews early
overlaps between what have seemed two distinct traditions, then talks with
seminal figures in the evolution of ethnographic film (Robert Gardner and
Lucien Castaing-Taylor,  founder of Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab,
avant-doc’s most productive studio) and personal documentary (Ed Pincus,
Alfred Guzzetti, Ross McElwee, Nina Davenport, Jonathan Caouette) and with
crucial contributors to the modern European “avant-doc”: Dutch-Indonesian
Leonard Retel Helmrich, Austrian Michael Glawogger, and Portuguese Susana
de Sousa Dias. Paweł Wojtasik discusses how a mystical experience freed him
from depression so that he could realize a cinematic form of perceptual
transcendence; and Todd Haynes discusses his early faux documentary,
*Superstar:
the Karen Carpenter Story* and how his early experiences with avant-garde
filmmakers and experimental documentaries paved the way for the commercial
anti-biopic *I’m Not There*.

            MacDonald’s interviews with filmmakers who have been working
for decades create a context for a panorama of discussions about recent
breakthroughs, including Jane Gillooly’s *Suitcase of Love and Shame*, Amie
Siegel’s *DDR/DDR*, Alexander Olch’s *The Windmill Movie*, Betzy
Bromberg’s *Voluptuous
Sleep*, Godfrey Reggio’s *Visitors*, Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s
*Leviathan*, Jennifer Proctor’s *A Movie by Jen Proctor*, and Stephanie
Spray and Pacho Velez’s *Manakamana*. The 22 filmmaker interviews are
preceded by a conversation with Annette Michelson about what led to her
early championing of documentary pioneer Dziga Vertov and avant-garde
filmmakers Stan Brakhage, Yvonne Rainer, and Hollis Frampton in *Artforum*.
An extended discussion of the thinking behind Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography
Lab concludes the volume.


*Best,*

*Scott*

*Scott MacDonald*
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