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more precisesince nearly all the filmmakers I interview make various types of filmseach film discussed in this volume could be ranged along an axis that extends from films that invoke many conventionsfilms like James Benning's
11 × 14
(1976), Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen's
Riddles of the Sphinx
(1977), Lizzie Borden's
Working Girls
(1986), and Su Friedrich's
Damned If You Don't
(1987)only to undercut the expectations they've created, to films that seem to have almost no connection with the conventional cinema, but nevertheless explore a dimension of the film experience that underlies both conventional and alternative film practice: Anthony McCall's
Line Describing a Cone
(1973), which focuses on the cone of light between projector and wall, is a good example.
My method as an interviewer has also remained the same. I have sought out filmmakers whose work challenges the conventional cinema, whose films pose problems for viewers. Whenever it has seemed both necessary and possible, I have explored all the films of a filmmaker in detail and have discussed them, one by one, in as much depth as has seemed useful. In a few recent instances, however, my interest in interviewing a filmmaker has been spurted by the accomplishments of a single film. I interviewed Anne Severson (now Alice Anne Parker) about
Near the Big Chakra
(1972) and Laura Mulvey about
Riddles of the Sphinx
because of the excitement of using these films in classes and the many questions raised about them in class discussions. In most cases, I have traveled to filmmakers' homes or mutually agreed-upon locations and have taped our discussions, subsequently transcribing and editing the discussions and returning them to the filmmakers for corrections. My editing of the transcribed tapes is usually quite extensive: the goal is always to remain as true to the fundamental ideas and attitudes of filmmakers as possible, not simply to present their spoken statements verbatim, though I do attempt to provide a flavor of each filmmaker's way of speaking. The interviews in
A Critical Cinema
are in no instance conceived as exposés; they are attempts to facilitate a communication to actual and potential viewers of what the filmmakers would like viewers to understand about their work, in words they are comfortable with.
While my general approach as an interviewer has remained the same, the implicit structure of Volume 2 differs from that of Volume 1, in which the interviews are arranged roughly in the order I conducted and completed them. In Volume 2 the arrangement of the interviews has nothing to do with the order in which they were conducted. Rather, the volume is organized so as to suggest general historical dimensions of the film careers explored in the interviews and to highlight the potential of the work of individual independent filmmakers not only to critique the conventional cinema but to function within an ongoing discourse with the work of other critical filmmakers.