Film & Video

"Having already published collections of critical essays on fiction, poetry, performance, politics and visual art, Richard Kostelanetz for the first time selects here from his writings on film and video. As in earlier volumes, these essays emphasize the primacy of possibilities intrinsic in each medium. Always representing radical alternatives, he writes with uncommon perception not only about familiar issues but about films customarily forgotten, and always with his customary clarity. Also included are prefaces and transcripts from his own films and videos. He writes: "Another implicit assumption behind my activity is acknowledging the importance of books in collecting together initially scattered opinions, for I have long contended that the critic who fails to risk publishing books is just a reviewing journalist, or, worse, an opportunist." Celebrating four decades of book-publishing, he remains a prolific force and a unique independent voice. Individual entries on Richard Kostelanetz appear in Contemporary Poets, Contemporary Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, A Reader's Digest to Twentieth-Century Writers, The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, Webster's Dictionary of American Authors, The HarperCollins Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature, and the Encyclopedia Britannica, among other distinguished directories. Living in New York City, where he was born, he still needs two bucks to take a subway."--Publisher's website.