Issue 5 marks the one-year anniversary of The Film Journal, and looking back over the past year, we've certainly come a long way. That first issue only had 9 articles, and four of them were written by me. Since then, our amazing list of contributors has grown many times over, and the quality of the work we publish continues to improve as well. We're very proud of our first year, and hope you have enjoyed it as much as we have.

There were plans at one time to make The Film Journal a more formal publication, with strict rules and guidelines and submission policies. But the open-forum ideal has become the journal's biggest asset, something that we're continually praised for. So our guideline has become simple: a well-written piece with only one real pre-requisite, passion for cinema. This is a journal for anyone with something to say about the art form. We will continue this standard in each and every issue.

Issue 5 constitutes the second part of our focus on experimental/underground/avant-garde cinema. Here we look at some of the titles from the video catalog of an amazing distributor of avant-garde films and videos, Re:Voir USA.

In addition, we have an excellent article from South Africa on the extremely prolific and edgy cinema of Ian Kerkhof.

In the future, we plan to revisit Fringe Cinema (as we like to call it), as the work that goes on in the underground is consistently as interesting, if not more so, than work of even the most premiere craftsmen of international cinema.

As always, I hope you enjoy this issue and please feel free to pass along any comments, questions or suggestions directly to me.

Until next time.

Richard A. Curnutte, Jr.
Editor, The Film Journal