Background
Scott MacDonald was born on October 10, 1942, in Easton, Pennsylvania, United States.
Scott MacDonald
313 S Locust St, Greencastle, IN 46135, United States
DePauw University where Scott MacDonald received his Bachelor of Arts degree.
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, United States
The University of Florida where Scott MacDonald received his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees.
313 S Locust St, Greencastle, IN 46135, United States
DePauw University where Scott MacDonald received his Bachelor of Arts degree.
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, United States
The University of Florida where Scott MacDonald received his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees.
(It is widely understood that writing can discuss writing,...)
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 people's relationship with 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 the film (and a wide range of other concerns) and serve as an accessible introduction to this important area of independent cinema.
https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Cinema-Bk-1/dp/0520058011/ref=pd_lpo_14_t_0/131-5199197-1503857?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0520058011&pd_rd_r=ad2876e2-64eb-46b7-8d1a-09aa5bd26a05&pd_rd_w=1JZBO&pd_rd_wg=PEVrn&pf_rd_p=7b36d496-f366-4631-94d3-61b87b52511b&pf_rd_r=NSXQCFF3WBTATTJKC1VA&psc=1&refRID=NSXQCFF3WBTATTJKC1VA
1988
(A Critical Cinema 2 offers a new collection of interviews...)
A Critical Cinema 2 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.
https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Cinema-Bk-Scott-Macdonald/dp/0520079183
1992
(The past thirty years have seen the proliferation of form...)
The past thirty years have seen the proliferation of forms of independent cinema that challenge the conventions of mass-market commercial movies from within the movie theatre. Avant-Garde Film examines fifteen of the most suggestive and useful films from this film tradition.
https://www.amazon.com/Avant-Garde-Film-Studies-Cambridge-Classics/dp/052138821X
1993
(A dazzling range of unconventional film scripts and texts...)
A dazzling range of unconventional film scripts and texts, many published for the first time, make up Scott MacDonald's newest collection. Illustrated with nearly 100 film stills, this fascinating book is at once a reference work of film history and an unparalleled sampling of experimental "language art."
https://www.amazon.com/Screen-Writings-Scott-Macdonald/dp/0520080254
1995
(A Critical Cinema 3 continues Scott MacDonald's compilati...)
A Critical Cinema 3 continues Scott MacDonald's compilation of personal interviews and public discussions with major contributors to independent filmmaking and film awareness. 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.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520209435/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i5
1998
(The Garden in the Machine explores the evocations of plac...)
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.
https://www.amazon.com/Garden-Machine-Field-Guide-Independent/dp/0520227387
2001
(As the most successful and influential film society in Am...)
As the most successful and influential film society in American history, Cinema 16 was a crucial organization for the creation of a public space for the full range of cinema achievement in the years following World War II. A precursor of the New York Film Festival, Cinema 16 screenings became a gathering place for New Yorkers interested not only in cinema but in the use of media in the development of a more complete, effective democracy. For 17 years, many of the leading intellectuals and artists of the time came together as part of a membership society of thousands to experience the creative programming of Cinema 16 director, Amos Vogel. What audiences saw at Cinema 16 changed their lives and had an enduring impact not only on the New York City cultural scene but nationwide.
https://www.amazon.com/Cinema-16-Documents-History-Society/dp/1566399246
2002
(A Critical Cinema 4 is the fourth volume in Scott MacDona...)
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 the 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.
https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Cinema-Interviews-Independent-Filmmakers/dp/0520242718
2004
(A Critical Cinema 5 is the fifth volume in Scott MacDonal...)
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.
https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Cinema-No-Scott-Macdonald/dp/0520245954
2005
(Bringing alive a remarkable moment in American cultural h...)
Bringing alive a remarkable moment in American cultural history, Scott MacDonald tells the colorful story of how a small, backyard organization in the San Francisco Bay Area emerged in the 1960s and evolved to become a major force in the development of independent cinema. Drawing from extensive conversations with men and women crucial to Canyon Cinema, from its newsletter Canyon Cinemanews, and from other key sources, MacDonald offers a lively chronicle of the life and times of this influential, idiosyncratic film exhibition and distribution collective. His book features many primary documents that are as engaging and relevant now as they were when originally published, including essays, poetry, experimental writing, and drawings.
https://www.amazon.com/Canyon-Cinema-Times-Independent-Distributor/dp/B005Q7SZZY
2008
(Over the past twenty-five years, Scott MacDonald's kaleid...)
Over the past twenty-five years, Scott MacDonald's kaleidoscopic explorations of independent cinema have become the most important chronicle of avant-garde and experimental film in the United States. In this collection of thematically related personal essays and conversations with filmmakers, he takes his readers on a fascinating journey into many under-explored territories of cinema. MacDonald illuminates topics including race and avant-garde film, the political implications of the nature film, the inventive single-shot films of the late 1960s and early 1970s, why men use pornography and what they are looking at when they do, poetry and the poetic in avant-garde film, the widespread failure of film studies academicians to honor those who keep film exhibition alive, and other topics.
https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Perception-Cinema-as-Exploration/dp/0520258568
2009
(American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary is a ...)
American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary is a critical history of American filmmakers crucial to the development of ethnographic film and personal documentary. 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.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Ethnographic-Film-Personal-Documentary/dp/0520275624
2013
(MacDonald explores the cinematic territory between the tr...)
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. 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.
https://www.amazon.com/Avant-Doc-Intersections-Documentary-Avant-Garde-Cinema/dp/0199388717
2015
Scott MacDonald was born on October 10, 1942, in Easton, Pennsylvania, United States.
Scott MacDonald attended DePauw University and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1964. Then he studied at the University of Florida where he obtained a Master of Arts degree in 1966 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1970.
Scott MacDonald began his career in the 1960s. His first teaching position was as an assistant professor of humanities at the University of Florida, the position he held from 1969 till 1970. In 1971 he joined Utica College of Syracuse University (now Utica College) and began working there as an assistant professor of English and film studies, becoming an associate professor of English and film studies in 1975. During the next twenty years from 1979, he was a professor of English and film at this college, becoming a professor emeritus in 1999. Since 1981 Scott has been a visiting professor of film at Hamilton College. From 2000 till 2004 he was also a visiting professor of film at Bard College, at Harvard University in 2007, 2009, and 2012; and a visiting professor of media arts at the University of Arizona in 2000. While MacDonald was a visiting professor at the University of Arizona, he conducted a series of free lectures titled "American Place in American Avant-Garde Film." In 2011 MacDonald was NEH professor of humanities at Colgate University.
Besides his teaching career, Scott MacDonald is known for his publications which focus on avant-garde cinema and its creators. For the first installment of his A Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers (1988) MacDonald interviewed critical filmmakers Hollis Frampton, Larry Gottenheim, Robert Huot, Takahiko Iimura, Babette Magolte, and Diana Barrie. A Critical Cinema 2 (1992) consists of interviews with nineteen independent filmmakers, including Michael Snow, Robert Beer, and Bruce Baillie. He also focuses much of this second volume on women filmmakers, including Yoko Ono, who discusses her early work with the dadaist Fluxus group and joint projects with husband John Lennon. A Critical Cinema 3 (1998) expands the scope of the previous two volumes by treating independent filmmaking on an international and multiethnic level. Interviews include Armenian filmmaker Arthur Peleshian, Marti Kaul of India, Nick Deocampo of the Philippines, and British filmmaker Sally Potter. The other two volumes of the series were published in 2004 and 2005.
The book Avant-Garde Film: Motion Studies (1993) contains fifteen short chapters, each headed with the name of one filmmaker and one of that filmmaker's works, then studies that particular work in relation to other works by the same artist. For example, the chapter, "Su Friedrich: The Ties That Bind" also contains extensive remarks on Sink or Swim by the same artist. The Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films about Place (2001) is a far-reaching and original work focusing on place, especially American place, represented in literature, art, photography, and moving images. In particular, MacDonald analyses mainstream and alternative movies and their representation of landscape and nature. He garnered the title of his book from The Machine in the Garden, a famous book by Leo Marx, and explained the opposing premises of the two books and how Marx depicts nineteenth-century American as an Eden into which rolls the locomotive.
His other books include Avant-Doc: Intersections of Documentary and Avant-Garde Cinema (2015), American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary: The Cambridge Turn (2013), Adventures of Perception: Cinema as Exploration, Interviews/Essays (2009), and Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor (2008). MacDonald also edited Critical Essays on Erskine Caldwell (1981), Screen Writings: Scripts and Texts by Independent Filmmakers (1995), and Cinema 16: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society (2002). His articles appeared in numerous journals, including Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Arts & Cinema, and Afterimage.
It's also worth noting, that Scott served as a guest curator of exhibit Frames of Mind: Recent Filmmaking in Central New York, at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute in 1986. Besides, he curated and presented film events for the Museum of Modern Art, the Harvard Film Archive, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, and elsewhere.
Scott MacDonald is known as an outstanding educator of cinema and media studies and gifted author. For his teaching activity, he received many awards. These include the National Endowment for the Humanities summer stipend (1981), Utica College Distinguished Teaching Award (1981), Utica College Clark Award for Outstanding Scholarship and Professional Development (1993), Utica College Alumni Association Outstanding Faculty Award (1993), Utica College Women's Center Ally for Women's Empowerment Award (1998), Utica College Student Life Outstanding Faculty Award (1998), Anthology Film Archives Film Preservation Award (1998). In 2012 he became an Academy of Motion Picture of Arts and Sciences Academy Scholar.
(Bringing alive a remarkable moment in American cultural h...)
2008(As the most successful and influential film society in Am...)
2002(MacDonald explores the cinematic territory between the tr...)
2015(The Garden in the Machine explores the evocations of plac...)
2001(It is widely understood that writing can discuss writing,...)
1988(Over the past twenty-five years, Scott MacDonald's kaleid...)
2009(A Critical Cinema 3 continues Scott MacDonald's compilati...)
1998(The past thirty years have seen the proliferation of form...)
1993(American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary is a ...)
2013(A Critical Cinema 4 is the fourth volume in Scott MacDona...)
2004(A Critical Cinema 5 is the fifth volume in Scott MacDonal...)
2005(A dazzling range of unconventional film scripts and texts...)
1995(A Critical Cinema 2 offers a new collection of interviews...)
1992MacDonald acknowledged that, while he loves all kinds of film, he believes avant-garde requires special attention.
Quotations:
"I've never liked the term avant-garde. It sounds like the avant-garde gets there first, and then everybody else follows. That's true sometimes, but just as often Hollywood gets there first, and then the avant-garde satirizes it."
"No matter how good avant-garde cinema is, it doesn't get in front of audiences. Consequently, it doesn't get rented much, so prints aren't struck... so it's a bit like nature itself. It's endangered."
Quotes from others about the person
"MacDonald is a near-ideal interviewer - well informed, concise, and unobtrusive - and his subjects are good talkers."
