This volume on avant-garde film has emerged as part of a wider reassessment of 20th century avant-garde art, literature and film carried out in the framework of a research project at the University of Edinburgh. It paves the way for a fresh assessment of avant-garde film and develops its theory as an integral part of a newly defined conception of the avant-garde as a whole, by closing the gap between theoretical approaches towards the avant-garde as defined on the basis of art and literature on the one hand and avant-garde cinema on the other. It gathers contributions by the most esteemed scholars in the field of avant-garde studies relating to the "classical" avant-garde cinema of the 1920s, to new trends emerging in the 1950s and 1960s and to the impact that innovative technologies have recently had on the further development of avant-garde and experimental film. The contributions reflect the broad range of different moving-image media that make up what we refer to today simply as "film", at the same time as reconsidering the applicability of the label "avant-garde", to offer a comprehensive and updated framework that will prove invaluable to scholars of both Moving Image Studies and Art History disciplines. Contents** Preface** Abstraction, Surrealism, Futurism: The Cinema of the Historical Avant-Garde ** R. BRUCE ELDER: Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling: The Dream of Universal Language and the Birth of The Absolute Film** A.L. REES: Frames and Windows: Visual Space in Abstract Cinema** Alexander GRAF: Berlin - Moscow: On the Montage Aesthetic in the City Symphony Films of the 1920s** Rudolf E. KUENZLI: Man Ray's Films: From Dada to Surrealism** Michael KORFMANN: On Mário Peixoto's Limite** Tami M. WILLIAMS: Dancing with Light: Choreographies of Gender in the Cinema of Germaine Dulac** Marina BURKE: Mayakovsky: Film: Futurism** Post-War American and European Experiments ** Maureen TURIM: The Interiority of Space: Desire and Maya Deren** Inez HEDGES: Stan Brakhage's Film Testament: The Four Faust Films** William WEES: Light-Play and the Aesthetics of Avant-Garde Film** Yvonne SPIELMANN: Paul Sharits: from Cinematic Movement to Non-directional Motion** Pierre SORLIN: Changes in experimental filmmaking between the 1920s and the 1960s: On Luis Buñuel** Bart KEUNEN and Sascha BRU: It's a Kind of Magic: World Construction in French Surrealist and Belgian Magical Realist Fiction and Cinema** Nicky HAMLYN: Peter Kubelka's Arnulf Rainer** Tania ØRUM: Danish Avant-Garde Filmmakers of the 1960s: Technology, Cross-aesthetics and Politics** New Technologies and Media Convergence: The Contemporary Avant-garde Film** Martine BEUGNET: French Experimental Cinema: the Figural and the Formless - Nicolas Rey's Terminus for you (1996) and Pip Chodorov's Charlemagne 2: Piltzer (2002) ** Frédérique DEVAUX: The Stammering Frame: on recent French and Austrian Film Experiments** Ursula BÖSER: Inscriptions of Light and The 'Calligraphy of Decay': Volatile Representation in Bill Morrison's Decasia** Günter BERGHAUS: From Video Art to Video Performance: The Work of Ulrike Rosenbach** Margit GRIEB: New Media and Feminist Interventions: Valie Export's Medial Anagrams** Jonathan WALLEY: The Paracinema of Anthony McCall and Tony Conrad** List of Illustrations** About the Authors** Index**