Making Images Move: Handmade Cinema and the Other Arts (Paperback)

Making Images Move reveals a new history of cinema by uncovering its connections to other media and art forms. In this richly illustrated volume, Gregory Zinman explores how moving-image artists who worked in experimental film pushed the medium toward abstraction through a number of unconventional filmmaking practices, including painting and scratching directly on the film strip; deteriorating film with water, dirt, and bleach; and applying materials such as paper and glue. This book provides a comprehensive history of this tradition of “handmade cinema” from the early twentieth century to the present, opening up new conversations about the production, meaning, and significance of the moving image. From painted film to kinetic art, and from psychedelic light shows to video synthesis, Gregory Zinman recovers the range of forms, tools, and intentions that make up cinema’s shadow history, deepening awareness of the intersection of art and media in the twentieth century, and anticipating what is to come.

Gregory Zinman is Assistant Professor of Film and Media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology and is a coeditor, with John Hanhardt and Edith Decker-Phillips, of We Are in Open Circuits: Writings by Nam June Paik.

Table of Contents

Introduction
A Shadow History of the Moving Image
PART I: HANDMADE FILM
- Between Canvas and Celluloid: Visual Music, Motion Paintings, and Cameraless Photography
- Abstractions in Time: Painting and Scratching on Film
- By Chemical, by Body, by Mechanism: Other Handmade Methods
-  Beyond the Frame: Cameraless Questions of Politics and Representation
PART II: HANDMADE MOVING IMAGES
- Light in Motion: The Moving Image between the Plastic Arts and Cinema
- Making Space, Making Time: Light Art of the 1950s and 1960s
- Forms of Radiance: The Practice and Significance of the Psychedelic Light Show
- Video Art: Analog Circuit Palettes, Cathode Ray Canvases
Conclusion: Handmade Moving Images in the Digital Era