P. Adams Sitney (1944-2025)

On June 8, American film historian and theorist P. Adams Sitney passed away. Sitney is widely recognized as a foundational historian and theorist of American avant-garde cinema. Best known for his landmark book Visionary Film (1974), he played a central role in shaping the canon of experimental film and co-founded Anthology Film Archives, where he helped curate the influential Essential Cinema series. Sitney studied classics and comparative literature at Yale and taught at major institutions including NYU, Bard, and Princeton, where he was awarded the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. A passionate advocate for celluloid and cinematic modernism, he celebrated filmmakers such as Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Hollis Frampton, and Andrei Tarkovsky. His writings emphasize cinema’s poetic and visionary dimensions, connecting it to literary and philosophical traditions. His other books include Modernist Montage (1990), Vital Crises in Italian Cinema (1995), Eyes Upside Down (2008), and The Cinema of Poetry (2015).