[Frameworks] A new book: Lost Highways, Embodied Travels & thanks

[Pip Chodorov]

Dear Kornelia,

Thank you for this announcement. The book looks great. Many friends’ films are discussed and even one that I worked on, and I look forward to reading it.

I had a question about the focus you describe: "situates them within the corporeal turn in American avant-garde cinema, so far mostly associated with body genres and sexually explicit films.” This peaked my curiosity because when I think of body genres I think more of the French avant-garde films of the 1970s (Klonaris/Thomadaki, Marti, Hernandez, etc). American films encompass so much abstraction, structural, diary, found footage, animation etc. I have always felt that experimental road movies celebrated what you describe in your introduction: “appealing to haptic visuality” and i did not understand the reference to horror and pornography that follows in the same sentence. From the table of contents, much of the book seems to be about motion, viewing and perception which describes the excitement I felt when making my own 16mm “road movies.” So this reference to bodies and sexuality confused me.

Secondly I wondered about the absence of pure diary films such as Taylor Mead’s Home Movies (NYC to San Diego) or Howard Guttenplan’s Diary films (San Francisco Diary). Although there is not a lot of car footage in those films, they do seem to be about travel and wandering - while you did include Jonas Mekas’ Travel Songs which do not contain much car footage at all, plus they are all shot in Europe (another question then about the Americanness of the road movie). Marie Menken’s Go Go Go is as much a city symphony film as is Henri Chomette’s Jeux de reflets et la vitesse except that this was shot in Paris rather than in New York. If the theme is about moving through space then films like Barbara Hammer’s Bent Time are road movies without cars. If the theme is more about America than Al Razutis’ film Amerika should be mentioned. In this regard, references to At Land and Scorpio Rising as travel films confused me.

But I will read the book first and then maybe these questions can be discussed more carefully!
Thank you for a provocative study.
Pip Chodorov



> Often identified as one of the most genuine and enduring American film genres, the road movie has never been explored in the context of experimental filmmaking. To fill this gap, Lost Highways, Embodied Travels provides the first book-length study of over eighty unique and often obscure films and videos and situates them within the corporeal turn in American avant-garde cinema, so far mostly associated with body genres and sexually explicit films. Drawing on unpublished archival materials, the book offers a fresh take on both past and current practices of the experimental film community for scholars, students, makers and film buffs.  

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