Dan Streible

Douglas Kellner

Emile De Antonio

Innovative documentary filmmaker; friend of Andy Warhol, John Cage, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and other leading figures of the New York art world; radical leftist critic of the Establishment; and legendary bon vivant: Emile de Antonio (1919-1989) was a larger-than-life personality and a key figure in the development of post-war American cinema. The films de Antonio made between 1963 and 1989 -- including Point of Order, Rush to Judgment, In the Year of the Pig, Painters Painting, and Millhouse: A White Comedy -- revolutionized the documentary format and inspired a generation of artists and filmmakers. A decade after his death, his cinematic legacy -- ranging from the brilliantly edited compilation of the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings that helped construct Senator Joseph McCarthy's reputation as a rogue demagogue (Point of Order) to a meditative juxtaposition of documents about F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover and intimate footage drawn from the filmmaker's own life (Mr. Hoover and I) -- remains unparalleled in American documentary film. Emile de Antonio: A Reader is the first full-length volume devoted to this major American filmmaker. It collects interviews with and writings by de Antonio; reviews and other critical material that detail the genesis, production history, and reception of his films; a comprehensive filmography; and an in-depth biographical essay. Offering a long overdue assessment of de Antonio's career, this indispensable book also makes a significant contribution to our understanding of American independent cinema at its most politically engaged.

A Reader

Emile de Antonio

Devin Orgeron

Marsha Orgeron

A vastly influential form of filmmaking seen by millions of people, educational films provide a catalog of twentieth century preoccupations and values. As a medium of instruction and guidance, they held a powerful cultural position, producing knowledge both inside and outside the classroom. This is the first collection of essays to address this vital phenomenon. The book provides an ambitious overview of educational film practices, while each essay analyzes a crucial aspect of educational film history, ranging from case studies of films and filmmakers to broader generic and historical assessments. Offering links to many of the films, Learning With the Lights Off provides readers the context and access needed to develop a sophisticated understanding of, and a new appreciation for, a much overlooked film legacy.

Educational Film in the United States

Learning with the Lights Off

"This compelling book forces us to rethink the history of cinema. Dan Streible's thought-provoking rediscovery of an entire lost genre of hundreds of early films reminds us how much we still do not know about the development of American movie culture. The fact that only a fraction of these forgotten films survive, and those mostly in fragments, makes this historical account of them all the more valuable."—Martin Scorsese "Men in skimpy clothing engaged in the manly art of beating on each other became the cinema's very first movie stars. With masterful historical research in both film and sport history, Dan Streible's book provides the definitive account of the complex fascination these first films exerted, as prizefighting collided with early cinema and staged new battles over gender, race and class."—Tom Gunning, author of D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film, and The Films of Fritz Lang "'Sporting' men and curious women, slumming elites and working-class laborers, nativists and European immigrants, Great White Hopes and insurgent African Americans—Dan Streible's meticulous research brings to life the dynamic, overlapping, and often contentious public spheres that fight films pull into focus. Written in smart and straightforward prose, Fight Pictures combines new critical insights about early cinema's aesthetics of display and struggles for cultural legitimacy with the social histories of boxing and American modernity.”—Jacqueline Stewart, author of Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity

A History of Boxing and Early Cinema

Fight Pictures

Learning With the Lights Off is the first collection of essays to address the phenomenon of film's educational uses in twentieth century America. Each essay analyzes in close detail some crucial aspect of educational film history, ranging from case studies of films and filmmakers to analyses of genres and broader historical assessments.

Dan Streible

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