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The Melancholy Lens
Loss and Mourning in American Avant-Garde Cinema
by Tony Pipolo
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Book Presentation:
• Offers a close examination of shots and frames overlooked by many scholars
• Features insights from materials and new interviews
• Written by a psychoanalyst and film scholar
The prevalence of loss and mourning, and of charged relationships with parents or parental figures has had a surprising influence on several American avant-garde filmmakers' work . To date, however, little attention has been given to these themes. In The Melancholy Lens, author Tony Pipolo offers a detailed look at the significant role of underlying biographical and psychological factors in specific works by leading avant-garde filmmakers. Covering a range of filmmakers including Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos, Robert Beavers, Ken Jacobs, and Ernie Gehr, The Melancholy Lens takes a sensitive approach to understand the motivations of each filmmaker as related to a given work. Pipolo argues, for example, that the work of Deren and Brakhage lends itself to a more aggressive appreciation of psychoanalytic principles.
The Deren films studied-Meshes of the Afternoon, At Land, and Ritual in Transfigured Time-are read as varying responses to the death of her father, with whom she had a strained relationship. Tortured Dust-the final film Brakhage made about his first family-was, by his own account, a work of contention and desperation. The elusiveness of Gregory Markopoulos' The Mysteries cannot conceal its naked obsession with death any more than it can diminish the film's poignancy. Robert Beavers' Sotiros is an especially rich and vivid exposure of a vulnerable chapter in the filmmakers's life. In the final two chapters on Ken Jacobs and Ernie Gehr, Pipolo looks outward for artistic motivation to show how both filmmakers' fascination with the history of film and video manifests as a melancholic view of greater history in their work. In the afterword, the author considers later figures whose work is kindred to the theme of this book, among them Nathaniel Dorsky, Phil Solomon, David Gatten, and Lewis Klahr.
About the Author:
Tony Pipolo, Professor Emeritus of Film and Literature, CUNY, New York Tony Pipolo is Professor Emeritus of Film and Literature at CUNY, New York. He is also a psychoanalyst in private practice and writes frequently on film for various journals and magazines.
Press Reviews:
"The Melancholy Lens is that rare critical work which, through its emotional and imaginative parameters, transcends its critical denomination to become, itself, a work of art." - Daryl Chin, Millenium Film Journal
"Employs psychoanalysis to explore the works of five avant-garde filmmakers through moments of loss and melancholy in their personal lives ... Through incisive analysis that never overreaches, Pipolo adds significantly to understanding these five filmmakers and their work." - J. I. Deutsch, CHOICE
"Avowedly speculative, Pipolo's psychoanalytical approach nevertheless yields valuable insights, thanks to the confessional nature of the cinema in question and to the author's almost forensic attention to detail and his careful research ... This important book presents key works of experimental American cinema in a compelling new light." - I. Olney, CHOICE
"This wonderfully written book is an exploration of the hearts and motivations of five film artists through their films, a study of loss and melancholy. Pipolo examines the filmmaker through the lens of the film to see what brought this particular film into existence. Informed by some knowledge of each filmmaker's life, by his own lifetime of looking lovingly at films, informed also by a scholarly but vital understanding of psychoanalysis, including a look at his own personal melancholy, he shows it all to us in his clear and careful writing style, shows why this artist had to make this film in this particular way. It seems there is some truth in the saying that loss makes an artist, or, as Stan Brakhage used to say, often, 'You must suffer to be great!'" - Jane Wodening
"Pipolo illuminates what is most exhilarating and troubling in films he feels as passionately about as do the most dedicated viewers of American avant-garde film." - Amy Taubin
See the publisher website: Oxford University Press
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