Undulating water patterns; designs etched or painted directly onto clear or black film leader; computer-generated, pulsating, multihued light tapestries—the visual images that often constitute experimental motion pictures are unlike anything found in either fictive narratives or documentary works. Direct Theory provides a historical and theoretical survey of this overlooked and misunderstood category of international film and video referred to as avant garde. In a radical revision of film theory that incorporates a semiotic system, Small and Johnson argue that experimental motion pictures constitute a special mode of theory that bypasses written and spoken words. The book looks at the historical development of experimental film from its beginning in the European avant-garde movement of the 1920s and highlights eight defining technical and structural characteristics of the genre.

This second edition includes a new preface and an added chapter discussing digital experimental film in the twenty-first century and its future. A deft historical interweaving of experimental production and scholarly discourse, this thought-provoking work firmly establishes the importance of experimental motion pictures in the discipline of film studies and production.