Carrying on: Leslie Thornton, Su Friedrich, Abigail Child and American Avant-Garde Film of the Eighties

Discusses a paradigm shift in avant-garde filmmaking as demonstrated by three films: "Peggy and Fred in Hell," "Sink or Swim," and "Is This What You Were Born For?". Mentions the tendency of critics to disregard avant-garde films by women in the 1980s, and touches on the lack of those films in the International Experimental Film Congress of 1989 in Toronto. Analyzes "narrative as free fall" in Leslie Thorntorn's "Peggy and Fred in Hell." Suggests that this type of narrative "integrates the past with an ongoing present, and remains open to the future." Illustrates the results of the "third person autobiography" style of "Sink or Swim," directed by Su Friedrich. Samples aspects of montage in Abigail Child's collection of short films entitled "Is This What You Were Born For?"