Critics hailed previous editions of Visionary Film as the most complete work written on the exciting, often puzzling, and always controversial genre of American avant-garde film. This book has remained the standard text on American avant-garde film since

Parker Tyler (1904-1974), one of the few great American film critics, was intimate with and enormously respected by many of the underground and experimental filmmakers of his time. In this book, Tyler evaluated the Underground in general and the seminal fParker Tyler (1904-1974), one of the few great American film critics, was intimate with and enormously respected by many of the underground and experimental filmmakers of his time.

In 1961 a fashionable commercial artist named Andy Warhol created an artistic furor in New York with his deadpan versions of the Campbells Soup can. Since then he has become the most talked about but least understood artist of the late 20th century.

"In his 1971 short film, (nostalgia) , American artist and writer Hollis Frampton oveturned the conventional narrative roles of words and images. In his account of an artists's transformation from photographer to filmmaker, Frampton burns photographs he had taken and selected from his past along with one found photograph. A calm voice tells a story about an image, but the story is about the following image, not the one shown.