Ex-Cinema: From a Theory of Experimental Film and Video, by Akira Mizuta Lippit

Experimental and avant-garde aesthetics are one of the more demanding areas to grasp in film and media studies; one that challenges notions of subjectivity, spectatorship and medium that seem sound in the contemplation of a wider cinema. It often shares much with other disciplines, as the objects of study themselves look outward to philosophy, art history and cultural theory. [1] Furthermore, it pushes against prescriptive critical attempts to historicise and delineate. [2] But Akira Mizuta Lippit’s recent Ex-Cinema: From a Theory of Experimental Film and Video does not seek to provide another history of experimental cinema. It proposes a concept, “ex-cinema”, and examines a wide range of film and video that is defined by this term.