Winner, 2009 Film Heritage Award
National Society of Film Critics

Best Avant-Garde Publication, 2009
Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival, Bologna

In the years following World War II, a new generation of Americans began experimenting with cinema. Some came to filmmaking from painting or sculpture; others from music, anthropology, photography, or political activism. A few took up the camera to create art with friends. Armed with inexpensive 16mm and 8mm equipment, these filmmakers started from scratch and pushed film in directions it had never gone before. Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986 presents 26 films by artists who helped to redefine cinema. It is the first anthology of the period available on DVD.

The new 5-1/4 hour, 2-disc anthology, released on March 3, 2009 by Image Entertainment, samples an array of film types and styles, from abstract animation to documentary and balances acknowledged classics with rediscoveries. The films are drawn from the preservation work of five of America's foremost avant-garde archives—the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Anthology Film Archives, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, and the Pacific Film Archive. None of the titles has been available before on good-quality video in the United States. Each artist is represented by one work:

• Bruce Baillie, Here I Am (1962)
• Wallace Berman, Aleph (1956-66?)
• Stan Brakhage, The Riddle of Lumen (1972)
• Robert Breer, Eyewash (1959)
• Shirley Clarke, Bridges-Go-Round (1958)
• Joseph Cornell, By Night with Torch and Spear (1940s?)
• Storm De Hirsch, Peyote Queen (1965)
• Hollis Frampton, (nostalgia) (1971)
• Larry Gottheim, Fog Line (1970)
• Ken Jacobs, Little Stabs at Happiness (1959-63)
• Lawrence Jordan, Hamfat Asar (1965)
• George Kuchar, I, An Actress (1977)
• Owen Land, New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops (1976)
• Standish Lawder, Necrology (1969-70)
• Saul Levine, Note to Pati (1969)
• Christopher Maclaine, The End (1953)
• Jonas Mekas, Notes on the Circus (1966)
• Marie Menken, Go! Go! Go! (1962-64)
• Robert Nelson & William T. Wiley, The Off-Handed Jape...& How to Pull it Off (1967)
• Pat O'Neill, 7362 (1967)
• Ron Rice, Chumlum (1964)
• Paul Sharits, Bad Burns (1982)
• Jane Conger Belson Shimane, Odds & Ends (1959)
• Harry Smith, Film No. 3: Interwoven (1947-49)
• Chick Strand, Fake Fruit Factory (1986)
• Andy Warhol, Mario Banana (No. 1) (1964)

The anthology was produced with the full support of the filmmakers and estates. Funding was provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts; telecine services were donated by Film Technology, Inc. John Zorn contributed new music; Martin Scorsese wrote the foreword to the program notes. AMPAS generously gave technical assistance. Net proceeds from Treasures IV will support further film preservation. Click here for a brochure.

Made on a shoestring, avant-garde films have always existed at the margins of commercial distribution. Over the last two decades film archives stepped forward to save what they can. They have collaborated with artists, compared alternative versions, tracked down the best surviving source material, and preserved scores of works. There are still many more films awaiting preservation and the process continues only thanks to public support.