This paper explores the intersection of landscape painting and neo-avantgarde cinema, collectively referred to as landscape film. Through examining selected works from three different filmmakers (James Benning, Stan Brakhage, Chris Welsby), I identify certain formal and thematic principles which can be used to establish an overarching typology of the genre. Based on the interpretative/contemplative distinction made by W. J. T. Mitchell concerning the approaches to the study of landscape, I argue that the majority of the filmmakers belonging to this genre utilize one of these two strategies to create visual landscape studies – the interpretative landscape film, inspired by 19th century romanticism, treats its subject as a textual system where spatiality is directly articulate of the social and political discourses which produce it, while the contemplative landscape film, drawing from post-impressionism, works toward the purification of the visual field by moving from figurative representation towards abstraction and making the material qualities of landscape its focal point of investigation.