The 1970s was an enormously creative period for experimental film. Its innovations and debates have had far-reaching and long-lasting influence, with a resurgence of interest in the decade revealed by new gallery events, film screenings and social networks that recognise its achievements. Professor Laura Mulvey, and writer/director Sue Clayton, bring together journalists and scholars at the cutting edge of research into 1970s radical cinema for this collection.

Codes for North is a study of the early evolution of the Canadian avant-garde film and its roots in an aesthetic of difficulty. Stephen Broomer traces the evolution of this cinema through the work of three artists—Jack Chambers, Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland—from their early development as painters in the 1950s to the creation of their epic films: Reason Over Passion (1969), The Hart of London (1970), and La Region Centrale (1971). Their work formed in response to a strain of Neo-Dada that took root in southern Ontario in the late 1950s.

At the beginning of the new millennium, an explosion of experimental film took place in the Buenos Aires movie scene, and creators whose work attracted attention at world festivals began to appear in large numbers. In seven works by various authors the book Buenos Aires Experiment seeks to look at the conditions of experimental filmmakers´ work and to reflect on it in the context of broader artistic scene. It also follows links to Argentinean experimental authors from the late 1960s to early 1980s, which the young generation endorse.

Narrative comprehension, memory, motion, depth perception, synesthesia, hallucination, and dreaming have long been objects of fascination for cognitive psychologists. They have also been among the most potent sources of creative inspiration for experimental filmmakers. Lessons in Perception melds film theory and cognitive science in a stimulating investigation of the work of iconic experimental artists such as Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, Maya Deren, and Jordan Belson.