During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of artists, including Paul Sharits, Joyce Wieland, and Owen Land, were fascinated by the properties of the film medium. Variously drawing attention to the flat surface of the screen, the fact that cinema is time-based, or the characteristics of the viewer's perception, they created rigorous films that still reveal truths about cinema. A second generation of artists continued these explorations. Coleen Fitzgibbon, working as Colen Fitzgibbon in the mid-seventies, studied with Land, Stan Brakhage, and Michael Snow. Her recently rediscovered films include FM/TRCS, in which she explores the degradation of an image of a woman getting dressed, and Restoring Appearances to Order in 12 Minutes, which conflates artistic labor and “woman's work.” In Riverbody, Alice Anne Parker (a.k.a. Anne Severson) constructed a film without edits, a continuous dissolve of eighty-seven nude bodies.

Catfood (Joyce Wieland, Canada, 1968, 13 mins). T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G (Paul Sharits, with poet David Franks, U.S., 1969, 12 mins). Riverbody (Alice Anne Parker (a.k.a. Anne Severson), U.S., 1970, 7 mins, B&W). FM/TRCS (Coleen Fitzgibbon, U.S., 1974, 11 mins). Restoring Appearances to Order in 12 Minutes (Coleen Fitzgibbon, U.S., 1975, 10 mins). New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals, a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops (Owen Land (a.k.a. George Landow), U.S., 1976, 10 mins)