Scott MacDonald teaches film history at Hamilton College and Harvard University. He is the author of several books, most recently, American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary.

• Table of Contents: ; Introduction ; Annette Michelson ; Robert Gardner ; Ed Pincus (and Jane Pincus, Lucia Small) ; Alfred Guzzetti ; Ross McElwee ; Nina Davenport ; Leonard Retel Helmrich ; Jonathan Caouette ; Pawel Wojtasik ; Michael Glawogger ; Susana de Sousa Dias ; Alexander Olch (on The Windmill Movie) ; Amie Siegel (on DDR/DDR) ; Arthur and Jennifer Smith (on Ice Bears of the Beaufort) ; Betzy Bromberg (on Voluptuous Sleep) ; Jen Proctor (on A Movie by Jen Proctor) ; Jane Gillooly (on Suitcase of Love and Shame) ; Godfrey Reggio (on Visitors) ; Todd Haynes ; Sensory Ethnography ; Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (on In and Out of Africa and Sweetgrass) ; Lucien Castaing-Taylor (on his installation work and on Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab) ; Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel (on Leviathan) ; Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez (on Manakamana) ; Filmographies ; Bibliographies

A compelling achievement, Avant-Doc diagrams a new fluid geography of cinema, where traditional categories such as experimental,"documentary," and "fiction" dissolve. The insightful, probing conversations assembled so deftly here vaporize fixed cinematic modes. These filmmakers describe cinema as a living organism, pulsating in networks of politics, arts, philosophies, teachers, literature, communities, technologies, and aesthetics.