Exploding Eye

Explores the work of lesser-known American experimental filmmakers whose films, though well-received and influential, have been excluded from the dominant film canon.

The Exploding Eye explores the work of lesser-known American experimental filmmakers whose work has been excluded from the dominant film canon. Although the works of such artists as Michael Snow, Stan Brakhage, Bruce Conner, Robert Nelson, and Maya Deren are well-known to the contemporary scholar of independent cinema, there is an entire body of work created in the American experimental cinema that has been overlooked, work of considerable beauty and influence that was enthusiastically received when first released and that is still available for viewing today, awaiting long-overdue rediscovery.

Featuring more than seventy rare stills and complete information on the films and filmmakers covered, The Exploding Eye offers a fresh vision of American experimental film for critics, scholars, and the general reader.

Wheeler Winston Dixon is Chairperson of the Film Studies Program at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He has written and edited ten books, including The Films of Jean-Luc Godard; It Looks at You: The Returned Gaze of Cinema; and Re-Viewing British Cinema 1900-1992: Essays and Interviews, all published by SUNY Press.