Professor of Cinema and Media Studies Scott MacDonald was profiled as the “preeminent scholar of experimental cinema” in the winter issue of Cineaste.
In “True to Form: Experimental Cinema’s Engagement with Reality,” University of Houston lecturer Michael Sicinski focuses on MacDonald’s three-book series on experimental documentary film – Avant-Doc: Intersections of Documentary & Avant-Garde Cinema (2015), The Sublimity of Document: Cinema as Diorama (2019), and Comprehending Cinema: Panoramic Audiovisioning (2024) – published by Oxford University Press.
Sicinski says the series “reflects both the increased dominance of nonfiction-based forms in avant-garde cinema, and the ways in which current practice in this area has served to highlight tendencies that were always present as a force within the cinematic avant-garde.
“MacDonald has probably gone further than any other major critic when it comes to identifying the parameters of this tendency,” Sicinski adds.
Cineaste is a leading magazine on the art and politics of the cinema.
Posted February 6, 2025
