Arthur Lipsett’s first film was nominated for an Academy Award in 1962, marking the arrival of an influential new voice. The film’s dark humour and dancing rhythms had captured the spirit of his times. When Lipsett died by suicide in 1986, the humour and joy of his work was eclipsed by that sardonic darkness. It all came to feel like an omen.

Film is the art form of our times. It has formed the background of our lives, informed visual arts practices, and formed our culture’s stories, its memory.

Moments of Perception is a landmark book. The first history of twentieth and early-twenty-first-century Canadian experimental filmmaking, it maps avant-garde films from the 1950s to the present day, including their contradictions and complexities.