The fourth volume of the Treasures from American Film Archives series, called Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986 is finally scheduled to be relased March 3, 2009.
The 2 DVD set will feature films by 27 different filmmakers, spanning nearly forty years from the post WWII period, and totalling more than 5 hours of content. Among the films included (many of them featured for the first time on DVD) are the works of artists such as Stan Brakhage, Hollis Frampton, Marie Menken, Harry Smith or Robert Breer. The set includes a 70-page booklet with film notes prologued by Martin Scorsese and new music by avant-garde composer John Zorn.
The films were selected from the preservation work of 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 and feature new pristine transfers. Net proceeds from the sale of this set will be split with the archives to support film preservation.
List of films included in the compilation:
- Bruce Baillie - Here I am (1962)
- Wallace Berman - Aleph (1956-66)
- Stan Brakahge - 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 environmnt 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 and 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)