Emile de Antonio

A Reader

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Edited by Douglas Kellner and Dan Streible

University of Minnesota Press

Due/Published May 2000, 392 pages, paper

ISBN 0816633649

Emile de Antonio (1919-1989) was an innovative documentary filmmaker; friend of Andy Warhol, John Cage, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and other leading figures of the New York art world; radical leftist critic of the Establishment; and a key figure in the development of postwar American cinema. The films de Antonio made between 1963 and 1989--including Point of Order, Rush to Judgment, In the Year of the Pig, Painters Painting, and Millhouse: A White Comedy--revolutionized the documentary format and inspired a generation of artists and filmmakers. A decade after his death, his cinematic legacy--ranging from the brilliantly edited compilation of the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings that helped construct Senator Joseph McCarthy's reputation as a rogue demagogue (Point of Order) to a meditative juxtaposition of documents about F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover and intimate footage drawn from the filmmaker's own life (Mr. Hoover and I)--remains unparalleled in American documentary film.

This reader is the first full-length volume devoted to this major American filmmaker. It collects interviews with and writings by de Antonio; reviews and other critical material that detail the genesis, production history, and reception of his films; a comprehensive filmography; and an in-depth biographical essay. Kellner and Streible offer a long overdue assessment of de Antonio's career.