ED HALTERis a critic and curator living in New York City. He is a founder and director of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York, and his writing has appeared in Artforum, the Believer, Bookforum, Cinema Scope, frieze, Little Joe, Mousse, Rhizome, Triple Canopy, the Village Voice, and elsewhere. His book From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games was published in 2006, and he is a 2009 recipient of the Creative Capital Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. From 1995 to 2005, Halter programmed and oversaw the New York Underground Film Festival. He has curated screenings and exhibitions at Artists Space, BAM, the Flaherty Film Seminar, the ICA in London, the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, and Tate Modern, as well as the cinema component of Greater New York 2010 at MoMA PS1, and the film and video program for the 2012 Whitney Biennial. He teaches in the Film and Electronic Arts department at Bard College and is currently writing a critical history of contemporary experimental cinema in America.

BARNEY ROSSET (1922–2012) was the legendary publisher who brought to America the works of dramatists Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, the anti-imperialist political writings of Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, and who published the scandalous novels of Henry Miller and William Burroughs in spite of outrage and accusations of indecency. Beat poets, French surrealists, German expressionists, and dramatists of the absurd—they all found a home at Grove Press, which he owned and ran from 1951–1985, and in the pages of the avant-garde magazine Evergreen Magazine, which he founded in 1957. A champion in the fight against all forms of puritanism, Rosset was taken to court several times on obscenity charges, most notably for publishing three novels now considered classics, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Tropic of Cancer, and Naked Lunch. In 1964, during a trial that would forever change the meaning of American culture and contribute to breaking down most censorship barriers, the Supreme Court would rule in his favor against those who demanded that The Tropic of Cancer be banned. Rosset had a lifelong interest in film as an art form. After serving in WWII, he shot the anti-racist documentary Strange Victory. In 1965 he commissioned Samuel Beckett to write the short movie Film, which Rosset then directed and produced starring Buster Keaton. In 1967, he bought a cinema in the Village, where he showed the Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow), whose explicit scenes of sex and nudity brought him once again to court. Rosset was named an officer of arts and letters by the French cultural ministry and honored by the National Coalition Against Censorship for defending free expression. In 2008, he also received the lifetime achievement Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation in honor of his contributions to American publishing. A posthumous autobiography titled Barney Rosset: My Life in Publishing and How I Fought Censorship was published in 2017.

Introduction
Ed Halter

1958
The Angry Young Film Makers
Amos Vogel

1960
Jazz on a Summer's Day
Jerry Tallmer

The Magic Box
Jerry Tallmer

1967

Dragtime and Drugtime, or, Film à la Warhol
Parker Tyler

Someday What You Really are is Going to Catch Up with You
Michael O'Donoghue

13 Confusions
Amos Vogel

The New American Cinema: Five Replies to Amos Vogel
Dan Talbot, Parker Tyler, Annette Michelson, Richard Schnickel, Gregory Markopoulos, with additional reply from Jonas Mekas

Chappaqua
Lawrence Shainberg

1968
Turning the Camera into the Audience
Nat Hentoff

Norman Mailer's Wild 90Lita Eliscu

Warhol's Nude RestaurantStefan S. Brecht

Vietnam Déjà Vu: A Film Review of Godard's La Chinoise
Lita Eliscu

The EdgeLita Eliscu

Sex and Politics: An Interview with Vilgot SjömanJohn Lahr

The Sixth New York Film FestivalSidney Bernard

1969

A Way of Life: An Interview with John CassavetesAndre S. Labarthe

Lola in LA: An Interview with Jacques DemyMichel Delahaye

The Day Rap Brown Became a Press Agent for ParamountAmos Vogel

Solanas: Film as a Political EssayLouis Marcorelles

Easy Rider: A Very American ThingL.M. Kit Carson

Participatory TelevisionNat Hentoff

Rocha's Film as Carnival Frieda Grafe

Rimbaud's Desert as Seen by PasoliniWallace Fowlie

1970

Mister Freedom: An Interview with William KleinAbraham Segal

Destroy, She Said: An Interview with Marguerite Duras Jacques Rivette & Jean Narboni

The Man Who Lies: An Interview with Alain Robbe-GrilletTom and Helen Bishop

Do They or Don't They? Why It Matters So MuchParker Tyler

Mandabi: Confronting AfricaJulius Lester

Seeing America First with Andy WarholDotson Rader

"It Could Only Happen in California"Dotson Rader

Women's Lib: Save the Last Dance for Me Tom Seligson

Have You Seen It All, Dennis Hopper?L.M. Kit Carson

Woodstock: An Interview with Michael Wadleigh and Bob MauriceKent E. Carroll

Mucking with the RealL.M. Kit Carson

Film and Revolution: An Interview with Jean-Luc GodardKent E. Carroll

We: A Manifesto, Dziga Vertov Papatakis: Tiger in a Think-TankParker Tyler

Hollywood's Last StandTom Seligson

1971

Fonda, My BuddySeymour Krim

Eros and the Muses
Jerome Tarshis

The First Annual Congress of the High Church of Hard CoreRobert Coover

News from Phyllis and Eberhard KronhausenSara Davidson

Those Homophile HusbandsParker Tyler

Pasolini's DecameronTom Hamilton

Film: Freaks and FelliniNat Hentoff

Perverse ChicTom Seligson

1973

A Transit to NarcissusNorman Mailer