What does it mean for film and video to be experimental? This title features a collection of essays framed by the concept "ex-" - meaning from, outside, and no longer. It explores the aesthetic, technical, and theoretical reverberations of avant-garde film and video.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments EXC00 Exergue Ex-cinema EXC01 Out of the Blue (ex nihilo) EXC02 Extimacy: Outside Time and Super-realist Cinema EXC03 Cinemnesis: Martin Arnold's Memory Apparatus EXC04 The Rhetoric of Images, of the Unimaginable EXC05 Derrida, Specters, Self-reflection EXC06 (Parenthesis: Video Ergo Sum) EXC07 Digesture: Gestures Without Bodies EXC08 Extract Matthias Muller EXC09 Revisionary Cinema EXC10 xxxxMA

“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