P. Adams Sitney (born August 9, 1944 in New Haven, Connecticut), is a historian of American avant-garde cinema.

[5] Sitney was a fixture at New York University's doctoral program in its new cinema studies department in 1970.

He has been a major critical leader and intellectual supporter of the New American Cinema avant-garde movement.

[6] Four main techniques that Sitney identified for structural film are: fixed camera position; flicker effect; re-photography off the screen; and loop printing.

These techniques were implemented by experimental filmmakers in the 1960s to create cinema "in which the shape of the whole film is pre-determined and simplified".