Underground film

by Parker Tyler

"What really goes on in Underground Film, in the scenes and behind them? How can the Underground be evaluated, both historically and at the moment? This definitive history of the experimental film movement, whose center today is the American Underground, offers appreciative but outspoken answers. Parker Tyler was the first critic to write seriously about the early Underground filmmakers, especially about Stan Brakhage, Sidney Peterson, Gregory Markopoulos, Willard Maas, and Maya Deren. Here he assesses their work along with that of Kenneth Anger, Ed Emshwiller, Ron Rice, Peter Kubelka, James Whitney, Stan VanDerBeek, Andy Warhol, Bruce Conner, Paul Sharits, Charles Boultenhouse, and other important new filmmakers. Discussing the specific films, he shows the variety of current aims and techniques, and traces their origins in Dada and Surrealism and in the classics of Bunuel, Cocteau, Rene Clair, Eisenstein, and Wiene. In his earlier books on the film, Tyler satirized the commercial esta