Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films about Place

From Library Journal
This academic study collects 11 essays that explore how avant-garde film and alternative media have used nature, landscape, and cityscape to evoke an American sense of place. MacDonald (Bard Coll.) flashes back and forth through film history, shuffling metaphors of America as the new Garden of Eden and making a case that the films discussed both intersect with and enlarge the field of American studies, notably 19th- and 20th-century literature, landscape painting, and photography. Densely written chapters measure the contributions of experimental filmmakers such as Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas plus a few surprising mainstream films: Twister, Natural Born Killers, and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. Many of the independent films featured here are obscure, and MacDonald makes a plea for their preservation, wider distribution, and discussion. But while he claims that his book is meant to be accessible to students and general readers, it is marred by reams of less-than-scintillating prose. Comments from the filmmakers would have added variety and relief from the pedantic narrative, which might, however, be useful for spot reference. A marginal purchase for large academic film culture collections. Stephen Rees, Levittown Regional Lib., PA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
The Garden in the Machine explores the evocations of place, and particularly American place, that have become so central to the representational and narrative strategies of alternative and mainstream film and video. Scott MacDonald contextualizes his discussion with a wide-ranging and deeply informed analysis of the depiction of place in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, painting, and photography. Accessible and engaging, this book examines the manner in which these films represent nature and landscape in particular, and location in general. It offers us both new readings of the films under consideration and an expanded sense of modern film history. Among the many antecedents to the films and videos discussed here are Thomas Cole's landscape painting, Thoreau's Walden, Olmsted and Vaux's Central Park, and Eadweard Muybridge's panoramic photographs of San Francisco. MacDonald analyzes the work of many accomplished avant-garde filmmakers: Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, James Benning, Stan Brakhage, Nathaniel Dorsky, Hollis Frampton, Ernie Gehr, Larry Gottheim, Robert Huot, Peter Hutton, Marjorie Keller, Rose Lowder, Marie Menken, J.J. Murphy, Andrew Noren, Pat O'Neill, Leighton Pierce, Carolee Schneemann, and Chick Strand. He also examines a variety of recent commercial feature films, as well as independent experiments in documentary and such contributions to independent video history as George Kuchar's Weather Diaries and Ellen Spiro's Roam Sweet Home. MacDonald reveals the spiritual underpinnings of these works and shows how issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and class are conveyed as filmmakers attempt to discover forms of Edenic serenity within the Machine of modern society. Both personal and scholarly, The Garden in the Machine will be an invaluable resource for those interested in investigating and experiencing a broader spectrum of cinema in their teaching, in their research, and in their lives.


From the Back Cover
"This book is MacDonald's magnum opus: it represents a deep immersion in and advocacy for independent, experimental cinema." --Patricia R. Zimmerman, author of States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracies "The Garden in the Machine is clearly MacDonald's major work. It is very original and wide reaching especially in its analysis of the relationship of American avant-garde films to the poetry and painting of the native landscape. MacDonald's authority is evident everywhere: he probably knows more about most of the films he discusses than anyone alive." --P. Adams Sitney, author of Modernist Montage: The Obscurity of Vision in Cinema and Literature


About the Author
Scott MacDonald teaches at Bard College. He is currently at work on volume 4 of A Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers (volumes 1, 2, and 3 available from California). He is the author of Avant-Garde Film/Motion Studies (1993) and editor of Screen Writings: Scripts and Texts by Independent Filmmakers (California, 1995).


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This academic study collects 11 essays that explore how avant-garde film and alternative media have used nature, landscape, and cityscape to evoke an American sense of place. MacDonald (Bard Coll.) flashes back and forth through film history, shuffling metaphors of America as the new Garden of Eden and making a case that the films discussed both intersect with and enlarge the field of American studies, notably 19th- and 20th-century literature, landscape painting, and photography. Densely written chapters measure the contributions of experimental filmmakers such as Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas plus a few surprising mainstream films: Twister, Natural Born Killers, and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. Many of the independent films featured here are obscure, and MacDonald makes a plea for their preservation, wider distribution, and discussion. But while he claims that his book is meant to be accessible to students and general readers, it is marred by reams of less-than-scintillating prose. Comments from the filmmakers would have added variety and relief from the pedantic narrative, which might, however, be useful for spot reference. A marginal purchase for large academic film culture collections. Stephen Rees, Levittown Regional Lib., PA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.


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