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In this small book, designed to accompany a series of screenings at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1992, Bart Testa examines recent critical debates over the aesthetic value and theoretical significance of early, so - called, 'primitive cinema,' and, as a corollary, considers the possibility that avant - garde films can help us 'to see cinema again, in places and at levels where we had ceased to see it.'
Hence the 'back and forth' of Testa's title not only implies an alternating critical attention - between early cinema and more recent avantgarde films - but also a complex interchange between early cinema as a source of avant - garde filmmaking, and avant - garde films as a guide to rereading early cinema. Testa devotes the bulk of his discussion, however, to what he calls 'a species of reportage' on the critical and theoretical approaches that have produced significant re - evaluations of early cinema. The avant - garde enters the picture chiefly through the appropriation and reuse of early cinema by filmmakers associated with the 'structural film'...