Visionary Film has remained the standard text on the American avant-garde since the publication of its first edition in 1974. It has been hailed as the most complete work written on the exciting, often puzzling and always controversial genre of American avant-garde film. In this book P. Adams Sitney discusses the principle genres and the major filmmakers since Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid made their dreamlike film "Meshes of the Afternoon" in 1943. Sitney also identifies the emergence and flowering of a new genre, which he calls Menippean Satire. This edition also includes a chapter on the films of Gregory J. Markopoulos which had been dropped from the second edition.

"Praise for previous editions of Visionary Film: Without question it is the first such book on the avant-garde film--the first one that probes this field in such depth, with such perspective and vision, with such insight and intelligence." - Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice