Robert Russett

Excellent, excellent, excellent. If you're interested in amazing movies made by very independent individuals, duos, & small groups, this bk will tell you about some of the most fascinating people & their work. There're even some people whose work I STILL HAVEN'T RUN ACROSS ELSEWHERE! Always a good sign. Some of my personal faves are in here: Hans Richter, Len Lye, Lotte Reininger, Alexander Alexeief & Claire Parker, Norman McLaren, Paul Sharits, John Whitney, Stan VanDerBeek, & Ed Emshwiller. & the close 2nds to being personal faves are pretty top-notch too. Please do note that the bk is co-authored by Cecile Starr & Robert Russett - the pre-existing entry only had Russett listed - I changed that so hopefully Starr's role will be more obvious. The image I uploaded is from the hardback.

I once guest-lectured in Steve Kurtz's Intro to Film class at Carnegie-Mellon University. I made a video of the 1st minute of movies I selected as of maximal significance & quality (NO D. W. Griffith! or Leni Riefenstahl!) for every 5 yrs since the cinema began (& a little before). I screened this for what was apparently a classroom full of statues. I say statues b/c when it came time for Q&A I cdn't tell whether the students were breathing or not. They certainly weren't asking questions. I reckon I must've been a lousy teacher - giving them too much at once or sumpin'. Anyway, the students didn't ask me anything but Steve asked me why there was so much animation. READ "EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATION" & you'll undertsand why my own personal history emphasizes animation so much in general - thru animation, some of the most clever, vivid, imaginative work of all time has been made (yes - even in the eons before I was born - wch, of course, I have vivid 'racial memories' of - even from before I was even a single-cell organism)!!… (altro)