John Pruitt Archive

Scope | Works About John Pruitt | Works by John Pruitt

John Pruitt. Credit: Pete Mauney, Bard College ’93 MFA ’00

Scope

This page is designed to be an ever-growing/-evolving online archive dedicated to the life and work of John Pruitt (1952-2019), professor of film at Bard College and avant-garde film scholar. Please get in touch (futurefilmscholars AT gmail.com) if you have links or texts to add.

Film Matters is indebted to library staff at the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s William Madison Randall Library and Eri Mizukane at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries for their assistance in sourcing John Pruitt’s publications.

Works About John Pruitt

Message from the President:

To the Bard Community,

It is with profound sadness that I share with the Bard community the news of the death of John Pruitt, who died late Friday evening at the age of 66. For the past several years John, with characteristic dignity, kindness, humility and generosity, battled brain cancer. Yet he continued to teach, all the way through to the end of last semester.

John came to Bard in 1981. For nearly four decades, he was a central and guiding figure in the Film Program. He inspired generations of Bard students, majors and non-majors alike, in lectures and seminars with his refined, elegant and acute insights in the nature and history of the film medium.

John was more than a teacher of film history and criticism; he was a committed exponent of the liberal arts. Few matched the range and depth of his interests. He was versed in literature, German, the classics, music, painting, and philosophy. Throughout his career at Bard he was a leading defender of general education and a tireless advocate of students. Few have devoted as much time and effort to the life of the college, bridging divisions and programs and creating a sense of a shared mission. John was a leader in the faculty. He led with calm, patience, empathy, humor and an unfailing instinct for how to defuse conflicts and resolve disagreements. John exemplified the best of Bard. He had a truly rare quality: the uncommon and uncompromising gift of friendship.

John is survived by his wife, Sheila Moloney ’84 BCG ’17, and their two children, Ida and Willa.

Works by John Pruitt

  • “About Thirty Years Ago: Michael Snow’s 1972 Solo Exhibition” | A Principality of Its Own: 40 Years of Visual Arts at the Americas Society (Americas Society, 2006): 132-145 | [PDF]
  • Adolfas Mekas (1925-2011) | The Brooklyn Rail | [Archived PDF]
  • “Andrew Noren: Adventures of the Exquisite Corpse, Part IV: ‘Charmed Particles’” | The Downtown Review 1.1 (1979): 12-13 | [PDF]
  • “Andrew Noren’s The Adventures of the Exquisite Corpse” | The Downtown Review 2.3 (1980): 18-20 | [PDF]
  • “The Avant-Garde Film, edited by P. Adams Sitney” | The Downtown Review 1.1 (1979): 27-28 | [PDF]
  • “Between Theater and Cinema: Silent Film Accompaniment in the 1920s” | American Symphony Orchestra | [Archived PDF]
  • “The Cruise of the Pnyx” | The Downtown Review 2.2 (1980): 37-38 | [PDF]
  • “Ernie Gehr’s Geography” | The Downtown Review 1.1 (1979): 9-10 | [PDF]
  • “Ernie Gehr’s Recent Work” | 10 Years of Living Cinema (Collective for Living Cinema, 1982): 65-68 | [PDF]
  • “In the Hotel des Folies-Dramatiques: Michael Snow’s The Living Room” | Michael Snow: Almost Cover to Cover (Black Dog Publishing, 2001): 128-141 | [PDF]
  • “Jonas Mekas: A European Critic in America” | To Free the Cinema: Jonas Mekas & the New York Underground (Princeton UP, 1992): 51-61 | [PDF]
  • “Living in the World” | Motion Picture (spring/summer 1986): 14-15 | [PDF]
  • “Meshes of the Afternoon: A Model of Visual Thinking” | Masterpieces of Modernist Cinema (Indiana UP, 2006): 138-158 | [PDF]
  • “Metamorphosis: Andrew Noren’s The Lighted Field” | CineMatrix 1.2 (winter 1999): 5-8 | [PDF]
  • “The Poetry of Charles Reznikoff” | The Downtown Review 1.2 (1979): 2-5 | [PDF]
  • “Robert Duncan” | The Downtown Review 1.3-4 (1979): 46-47 | [PDF]
  • “Stan Brakhage and the Long Reach of Maya Deren’s Poetics of Film” | Chicago Review 47.4/48.1 (2001): 116-132 | [PDF]
  • “Stan Brakhage’s Sincerity, Reels One, Two and Three” | The Downtown Review 1.2 (1979): 9-11 | [PDF]
  • “The Untutored Eye by Marjorie Keller” | Millennium Film Journal 28 (1995): 78-85 | [PDF]
  • “The Video Work of Richard Foreman” | The Downtown Review 3.1-2 (1981/82): 21-25 | [PDF]
  • “Webb and Walker at Danspace” | The Downtown Review 2.1 (1979/80): 34-35 | [PDF]
  • “What’s in a Name?: The American Avant Garde Film, Or…” | CineMatrix 1.1 (spring 1998): 4-8 | [PDF]
John Pruitt. Credit: Pete Mauney, Bard College ’93 MFA ’00