Scott MacDonald

Intersections of Documentary and Avant-Garde Cinema

Avant-Doc

Interview with Independent Filmmakers

A Critical Cinema

This sequel to A Critical Cinema offers a new collection of interviews with independent filmmakers that is a feast for film fans and film historians. Scott MacDonald reveals the sophisticated thinking of these artists regarding film, politics, and contemporary gender issues. The interviews explore the careers of Robert Breer, Trinh T. Minh-ha, James Benning, Su Friedrich, and Godfrey Reggio. Yoko Ono discusses her cinematic collaboration with John Lennon, Michael Snow talks about his music and films, Anne Robertson describes her cinematic diaries, Jonas Mekas and Bruce Baillie recall the New York and California avant-garde film culture. The selection has a particularly strong group of women filmmakers, including Yvonne Rainer, Laura Mulvey, and Lizzie Borden. Other notable artists are Anthony McCall, Andrew Noren, Ross McElwee, Anne Severson, and Peter Watkins.

Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

Jacqueline Najuma Stewart

William Greaves is one of the most significant and compelling American filmmakers of the past century. Best known for his experimental film about its own making, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, Greaves was an influential independent documentary filmmaker who produced, directed, shot, and edited more than a hundred films on a variety of social issues and on key African American figures ranging from Muhammad Ali to Ralph Bunche to Ida B. Wells. A multitalented artist, his career also included stints as a songwriter, a member of the Actors Studio, and, during the late 1960s, a producer and cohost of Black Journal, the first national television show focused on African American culture and politics. This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of Greaves’s remarkable career. It brings together a wide range of material, including a mix of incisive essays from critics and scholars, Greaves’s own writings, an extensive meta-interview with Greaves, conversations with his wife and collaborator Louise Archambault Greaves and his son David, and a critical dossier on Symbiopsychotaxiplasm. Together, they illuminate Greaves’s mission to use filmmaking as a tool for transforming the ways African Americans were perceived by others and the ways they saw themselves. This landmark book is an essential resource on Greaves’s work and his influence on independent cinema and African-American culture.

Filmmaking as Mission

William Greaves

Henry the Heron is a tale of friendship and overcoming adversity.Henry is left behind on the Isle of Barra when him and his family are heading South for the winter.Henry must find a way to get back to his family, but theres a problem.Henry has never flown on his own before!

Heading South

Henry The Heron

the life and times of an independent film distributor

Canyon Cinema

Sadie

They're loyal, loving, and big-hearted—dogs are our best friends for a good reason. Yet they have much more to offer than just love and friendship. Let CEO Scott MacDonald and rescue dog Sadie show you how to have a more rewarding life and a more successful career in Think Like a Dog. With whimsy and insight, Scott and Sadie offer important lessons in loyalty, persistence, leaving your mark, and always being a great sniffer. Scott reveals what Sadie and other dogs teach us about successful work habits and organizational strategies for outstanding business success. Want a better, happier, and more satisfying life? Want to be successful? Start by understanding a dog's perspective and applying the lessons learned!

How Dogs Teach Us to Be Happy in Life and Successful at Work

Think Like a Dog

Eleonore Stump

Aquinas's discussions of moral issues are extensive, and range well beyond the narrowly defined set of issues in the modern tradition of moral philosophy. This volume explores the ethical dimensions of a wide selection of philosophical and theological topics in Aquinas's texts. It covers topics central to ethics, such as happiness, moral virtue, and natural law, as well as related topics pertaining to the metaphysical basis of Aquinas's account of goodness, the ramifications of his ethical concerns for his philosophy of language, and the significance of his philosophical psychology for his ethics. The volume is divided into three sections focusing, respectively, on issues concerning moral theory and moral theology, moral psychology and practical reason, and moral theory in philosophy of language and metaphysics. The authors—distinguished scholars of medieval philosophy—bring to these issues a variety of approaches and viewpoints. By creatively sampling the breadth of Aquinas's reflections on ethical issues and exploring some of the significant connections that tie his moral thought to other parts of his philosophical and theological system, they display the richness and depth of Aquinas's moral thinking.

Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann

Aquinas's Moral Theory

Scott Charles MacDonald

In exploring this tradition of philosophical reflection on the nature of goodness, the twelve essays in this book (all but two published here for the first time) present some of the best recent historical scholarship in...

The Concept of the Good in Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology

Being and Goodness

MacDonald explores the cinematic territory between the traditional categories of "documentary" and "avant-garde" film, through candid, in-depth conversations with filmmakers whose work has challenged these categories. Arranged in an imaginative chronology and written to be accessible to any film-interested reader, the interviews in Avant-Doc chart half a century of thinking by inventive filmmakers such as Robert Gardner, Ed Pincus, Alfred Guzzetti, Ross McElwee, Leonard Retel Helmrich, Michael Glawogger, Susana de Sousa Dias, Jonathan Caouette, Pawel Wojtasik, and Todd Haynes. Recent breakthroughs by Amie Siegel, Jane Gillooly, Jennifer Proctor, Betzy Bromberg, and Godfrey Reggio are discussed; and considerable attention is paid to Harvard's innovative Sensory Ethnography Lab, producer of Sweetgrass, Leviathan, and Manakamana. A rare interview with pioneering scholar Annette Michelson begins Avant-Doc's meta-conversation.

A Critical Cinema 4 is the fourth volume in Scott MacDonald's Critical Cinema series, the most extensive, in-depth exploration of independent cinema available in English. In this new set of interviews, MacDonald once again engages filmmakers in detailed discussions of their films and of the personal experiences and political and theoretical currents that have shaped their work. The interviews are arranged to express the remarkable diversity of modern independent cinema and the network of interconnections within the community of filmmakers. A Critical Cinema 4 includes the most extensive interview with the late Stan Brakhage yet published; a conversation with P. Adams Sitney about his arrival on the New York independent film scene; a detailed discussion with Peter Kubelka about the experience of making Our African Journey; a conversation with Jill Godmilow and Harun Farocki on modern political documentary; Jim McBride's first extended published conversation in thirty years; a discussion with Abigail Child about her evolution from television documentarian to master editor; and the first extended interview with Chuck Workman. This volume also contains discussions with Chantal Akerman about her place trilogy; Lawrence Brose on his examination of Oscar Wilde's career; Hungarian Peter Forgács about his transformation of European home movies into video operas; Iranian-born Shirin Neshat on working between two cultures; and Ellen Spiro about exploring America with her video camera and her dog. Each interview is supplemented by an introductory overview of the filmmaker's contributions. A detailed filmography and a selected bibliography complete the volume.

A Critical Cinema 4

"The Sublimity of Document: Cinema as Diorama is a collection of in-depth, substantive interviews with filmmakers devoted to documenting places and events that most of us never get to see--often, places and events that have considerable influence on our lives. The 27 interviews offer an engaging panorama of the recent history and geography of cinema devoted to documenting the world around us, as well as an in-depth look at the challenges and accomplishments of filmmakers willing to go anywhere on the planet (or on the internet!) to document what they believe we need to see"--

Cinema As Diorama

The Sublimity of Document

American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary is a critical history of American filmmakers crucial to the development of ethnographic film and personal documentary. The Boston and Cambridge area is notable for nurturing these approaches to documentary film via institutions such as the MIT Film Section and the Film Study Center, the Carpenter Center and the Visual and Environmental Studies Department at Harvard. Scott MacDonald uses pragmatism’s focus on empirical experience as a basis for measuring the groundbreaking achievements of such influential filmmakers as John Marshall, Robert Gardner, Timothy Asch, Ed Pincus, Miriam Weinstein, Alfred Guzzetti, Ross McElwee, Robb Moss, Nina Davenport, Steve Ascher and Jeanne Jordan, Michel Negroponte, John Gianvito, Alexander Olch, Amie Siegel, Ilisa Barbash, and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. By exploring the cinematic, personal, and professional relationships between these accomplished filmmakers, MacDonald shows how a pioneering, engaged, and uniquely cosmopolitan approach to documentary developed over the past half century.

The Cambridge Turn

American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary

It is widely understood that writing can discuss writing, but we rarely consider that film can be used as a means of analyzing conventions of the commercial film industry, or of theorizing about cinema in general. Over the past few decades, however, independent cinema has produced a body of fascinating films that provide intensive critiques of nearly every element of the cinematic apparatus. The experience of these films simultaneously depends on and redefines our relationship to the movies. Critical Cinema provides a collection of in-depth interviews with some of the most accomplished "critical" filmmakers. These interviews demonstrate the sophistication of their thinking about film (and a wide range of other concerns) and serve as an accessible introduction to this important area of independent cinema. Each interview is preceded by a general introduction to the filmmaker's work; detailed filmographies and bibliographies are included. Critical Cinema will be a valuable resource for all those involved in the formal study of film, and will be essential reading for film lovers interested in keeping abreast of recent developments in North American cinema. INTERVIEWEES: Hollis Frampton, Larry Gottheim, Robert Huot, Taka Iimura, Carolee Schneeman, Tom Chomont, J.J. Murphy, Beth B and Scott B, John Waters, Vivienne Dick, Bruce Conner, Robert Nelson, Babette Mangolte, George Kuchar, Diana Barrie, Manuel DeLanda, Morgan Fisher.

Almost 50 million Americans have cumulatively borrowed more than $1.5 trillion to attend college. Roughly one-third of all adults aged 25 to 34 have a student loan. In Education without Debt businessman and philanthropist Scott MacDonald examines the real-life impact of crushing levels of student debt on borrowers and what can be done to fix this crisis. Weaving together stories of debt-impaired lives with stories of personal success achieved with the essential help of financial aid, MacDonald reveals the devastating personal and societal impact of the debt problem and offers possible solutions. He explores the efforts of colleges and private philanthropists to make education affordable and relates his own experience of funding financial aid for need-eligible students at five universities. Education without Debt is a must-read book for anyone concerned about the rising cost of education and what to do about this critical policy and societal issue.

Giving Back and Paying It Forward

Education without Debt

A Critical Cinema 5 is the fifth volume in Scott MacDonald's Critical Cinema series, the most extensive, in-depth exploration of independent cinema available in English. In this new set of interviews, MacDonald engages filmmakers in detailed discussions of their films and of the personal experiences and political and theoretical currents that have shaped their work. The interviews are arranged to express the remarkable diversity of modern independent cinema and the interactive community of filmmakers that has dedicated itself to producing forms of cinema that critique conventional media.

A Critical Cinema 5

A Critical Cinema 3 continues Scott MacDonald's compilation of personal interviews and public discussions with major contributors to independent filmmaking and film awareness. An informative exchange with Amos Vogel, whose Cinema 16 Society drew American filmgoers into a broader sense of film history, is followed by interviews reflecting a wide range of approaches to filmmaking. Sally Potter discusses her popular feature, Orlando, in relation to the experimental work that preceded it, and Canadian independent John Porter argues compellingly for small-gauge, Super-8mm filmmaking. Ken Jacobs discusses the "Nervous System" apparatus with which he transforms old film footage into new forms of motion picture art; Jordan Belson describes his Vortex Concerts, ancestors of modern laser light shows; and Elias Merhige talks about going beneath the "rational structure of meaning" in Begotten. A Critical Cinema 3 presents independent cinema as an international and multiethnic phenomenon. MacDonald interviews filmmakers from Sweden, France, Italy, Austria, Armenia, India, the Philippines, and Japan and examines the work of African Americans, European Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanics. He provides an introductory overview of each interviewee, as well as detailed film/videographies and selected bibliographies. With its predecessors, A Critical Cinema (California, 1988) and A Critical Cinema 2 (California, 1992), this is the most extensive, in-depth exploration of independent cinema available in English.

Scott MacDonald

Books

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