It is, necessarily perhaps, a bit too sweeping (and thus at times lacking in detail) in its review of experimental films from the '20s to the present. But O'Pray writes in a clear, accessible style, and though he analyzes few of the films at length or in depth, this kind of analysis can be filled in by the instructor's supplementary handouts and by class discussion.
Overall, a highly recommended text for film instructors who teach undergraduate classes in experimental film.
Avant-Garde Film: Forms, Themes and Passions examines the variety of concerns and practices that have comprised the long history of avant-garde film at a level appropriate for undergraduate study. It covers the developments of experimental film-making since the modernist explosion in the 1920s in Europe through to the Soviet film experiments, the American Underground cinema and the French New Wave, structuralism and contemporary gallery work of the young British artists. Through in-depth case-studies, the book introduces students not only to the history of the avant-garde but also to varied analytical approaches to the films themselves - ranging from abstraction (Richter, Ruttmann) to surreal visions (Bunuel, Wyn Evans), underground subversion (Jack Smith, Warhol) to experimental narrative (Deren and Antonioni).