Available From UC Press

What does it mean for film and video to be experimental? In this collection of essays framed by the concept “ex-”—meaning from, outside, and no longer—Akira Mizuta Lippit explores the aesthetic, technical, and theoretical reverberations of avant-garde film and video. Ex-Cinema is a sustained reflection on the ways in which experimental media artists move outside the conventions of mainstream cinema and initiate a dialogue on the meaning of cinema itself.

Akira Mizuta Lippit is Professor of Cinematic Arts, Comparative Literature, and East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. He is on the board of Film Quarterly, and is author of Atomic Light (Shadow Optics) and Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife.

“Ex-Cinema offers lucid and mesmerizing readings of a broad spectrum of avant-garde films and videos, ranging from Derek Jarman’s Blue to Martin Arnold’s and Matthias Müller’s very different found footage works, from Maya Deren to structural film, and from Su Friedrich’s performative autobiographies to Diane Thater’s zoo videos. Lippit’s passion for addressing the philosophical implications of experimental film and video is as astounding as it is laudable.” —Roy Grundmann, author of Andy Warhol’s Blow Job



“In this collection of brilliant essays on avant-garde film and video, Akira Lippit manifests a precise intelligence and a critical acumen that stretch our understanding of cinema. Invoking the concept of ‘Ex-Cinema,’ he produces an intricate chain of questions that challenge conventional notions of interiority and exteriority, medium specificity, and narratives of the self. Lippit’s writing resonates with the affective impact of the works he discusses—from Derek Jarman’s Blue to Jacques Derrida’s work on blindness and the spectral. This is a dazzling tour through a series of provocative and groundbreaking works.” —Mary Ann Doane, author of The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive