The Red Thread (ePub)

The Red Thread is the definitive work on Larry Gottheim, a key figure in the history of American experimental film.

Gottheim's account of the evolution of his work over the decades provide an extraordinary window onto the development of the art form in America in the late 20th century. His own account of his lifelong exploration of the boundaries of cinematic perception is here combined with the reflections of other major film artists and critics on the importance of his work.

Gottheim was both the founder of the first and most influential American university program devoted to avant-garde film and one of its most masterful practitioners. As curator and critic Steve Anker writes in this volume, "Gottheim's films stretch our experience of what cine-memory can be. Sound and image landscapes can create a shared past, as it is revealed by this artist: a past that is resonant and meaningful to our sense of the present."

Film historian Scott MacDonald concludes that "early on, Gottheim (and other filmmakers working around him during the 1960s-1970s) challenged us to rethink our conventional experiences with filmgoing: basically, to start over by deepening and broadening our perception of what the elements of celluloid cinema were and how they could be used. Now, half a century later, his film Entanglement is a kind of meta-haiku that challenges us to work at comprehending, as best we can, the media-saturated world of the 21st century that we are all awash in."