P. Adams Sitney is a historian of American avant-garde cinema.

Life

He was educated in his hometown, at Yale University. He was a founder of Anthology Film Archives

Anthology Film Archives

__notoc__Anthology Film Archives is a film archive and theater located at 32 Second Avenue on the corner of East Second Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City devoted to the preservation and exhibition of experimental film. It is the only non-profit organization of its...

 and, along with Jonas Mekas

Jonas Mekas

Jonas Mekas is a Lithuanian-born American filmmaker, writer, and curator who has often been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema." His work has been exhibited in museums and festivals across Europe and America.-Biography:...

, Peter Kubelka

Peter Kubelka

Peter Kubelka is an Austrian experimental filmmaker. His films are primarily short experiments in linking seemingly disparate sound and images...

, Ken Kelman, and James Broughton

James Broughton

James Broughton was an American poet, and poetic filmmaker. He was part of the San Francisco Renaissance...

, served as one of the members of the Anthology Film Archives Essential Cinema film selection committee. He is currently Professor of Visual Arts in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

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Sitney was a fixture at New York University's new (1970) doctoral program in the new Cinema Studies Department. Before moving to Princeton he also taught at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He has been a major critical leader and intellectual supporter of the New American Cinema (avant-garde) movement.

Sitney is the Spring 2011 recipient of the Anna-Maria Kellen Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin

American Academy in Berlin

The American Academy in Berlin is a research and cultural institution in Berlin whose stated mission is to foster a greater understanding and dialogue between the people of the United States and the people of Germany.The American Academy was founded in September 1994 by a group of prominent...

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Works

In 1974, he wrote Visionary Film, the first major history of post-World War II American avant-garde filmmaking; revised editions of the book were published in 1979 and 2002. He is also the author of Modernist Montage: The Obscurity of Vision in Cinema and Literature (1992) and Vital Crises in Italian Cinema: Iconography, Stylistics, Politics (1995), Eyes Upside Down: Visionary filmmakers and the Heritage of Emerson (2008) and the editor of The Essential Cinema: Essays on the Films in the Collection of Anthology Film Archives (1975), Film Culture Reader (1970), The Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism (1987).