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Experimental film or experimental cinema describes a range of filmmaking styles that are generally quite different from, and often opposed to, the practices of mainstream commercial and documentary filmmaking. Avant-garde is also used, for the films shots in the twenties in the field of history’s avant-gardes currents in France or Germany, to describe this work, and underground has been used in the sixties, though it has also had other connotations. Today the term experimental cinema prevails, because it’s possible to make experimental films without the presence of any avant-garde movement in the cultural field. Like in the present time.

While "experimental" covers a wide range of practice, an experimental film is often characterized by the absence of linear narrative, the use of various abstracting techniques (out of focus, painting or scratching on film, rapid editing), the use of asynchronous (non-diegetic) sound or even the absence of any sound track. The goal is often to place the viewer in a more active and more thoughtful relationship to the film. At least through the 1960s, and to some extent after, many experimental films took an oppositional stance toward mainstream culture. Most such films are made on very low budgets, self-financed or financed through small grants, with a minimal crew or, quite often, a crew of only one person, the filmmaker. It has been argued that much experimental film is no longer in fact "experimental," but has in fact become a film genre^[1] and that many of its more typical features (such as a non-narrative, impressionistic, or poetic approaches to the film's construction) define what is generally understood to be "experimental".^[2]

History

The European avant-garde

Two conditions made Europe in the 1920s ready for the emergence of experimental film. First, the cinema matured as a medium, and highbrow resistance to the mass entertainment began to wane. Second, avant-garde movements in the visual arts flourished. The

The Soviet filmmakers, too, found a counterpart to modernist painting and photography in their theories of montage. The films of Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, Alexander Dovzhenko, and Vsevolod Pudovkin were instrumental in providing an alternate model from that offered by classical Hollywood. While not experimental films per se, they contributed to the film language of the avant-garde。

The postwar American avant-garde

The U.S. had some avant-garde films before World War II, such as Manhatta (1921) by Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, and The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra (1928) by Slavko Vorkapich and Robert Florey. However, much pre-war experimental film culture consisted of artists working, often in isolation, on film projects. Painter Emlen Etting (1905-1993) directed dance films in the early 1930s that are considered experimental, and artist Douglass Crockwell (1904–1968)^[3] made animations with blobs of paint pressed between sheets of glass in his studio at Falls River, New York.^[4]

In Rochester, New York, medical doctor and philanthropist James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber directed The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) and Lot in Sodom (1933). Harry Smith, Mary Ellen Bute, artist Joseph Cornell, and Christopher Young made several European-influenced experimental films. In 1930 appears the magazine Experimental Cinema with, for the first time, the two words directly connected without any space between them.^[5] The editors were Lewis Jacobs and David Platt. In October 2005, a large collection of films of that time were restored and re-released on DVD, titled Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941.^[6]

With Slavko Vorkapich,

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid is considered to be one of the first important American experimental films. It provided a model for self-financed 16 mm production and distribution, one that was soon picked up by Cinema 16 and other film societies. Just as importantly, it established an aesthetic model of what experimental cinema could do. Meshes had a dream-like feel that hearkened to Jean Cocteau and the Surrealists, but equally seemed personal, new and American. Early works by Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Shirley Clarke, Gregory Markopoulos, Jonas Mekas, Willard Maas, Marie Menken, Curtis Harrington and Sidney Peterson followed in a similar vein. Significantly, many of these filmmakers were the first students from the pioneering university film programs established in Los Angeles and New York. In 1946, Frank Stauffacher started the "Art in Cinema" series of experimental films at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

They set up "alternative film programs" at Black Mountain College (now defunct) and the San Francisco Art Institute. Arthur Penn taught at Black Mountain College, which points out the popular misconception in both the art world and Hollywood that the avant-garde and the commercial never meet. Another challenge to that misconception is the fact that late in life, after each's Hollywood careers had ended, both Nicholas Ray and King Vidor made avant-garde films.

The New American Cinema and Structural-Materialism

The film society and self-financing model continued over the next two decades, but by the early 1960s, a different outlook became perceptible in the work of American avant-garde filmmakers. Artist

Some avant-garde filmmakers moved further away from narrative. Whereas the New American Cinema was marked by an oblique take on narrative, one based on abstraction, camp and minimalism, Structural-Materialist filmmakers like Hollis Frampton and Michael Snow created a highly formalist cinema that foregrounded the medium itself: the frame, projection, and most importantly, time. It has been argued that by breaking film down into bare components, they sought to create an anti-illusionist cinema, although Frampton's late works owe a huge debt to the photography of Edward Weston, Paul Strand, and others, and in fact celebrate illusion. Further, while many filmmakers began making rather academic "structural films" following Film Culture's publication of an article by P. Adams Sitney in the late 1960s, many of the filmmakers named in the article objected to the term.

A critical review of the structuralists appeared in a 2000 edition of the art journal

The 1970s and time arts in the conceptual art landscape

In the 1980s feminist, gay and other political experimental work continued, with filmmakers like Barbara Hammer, Su Friedrich, Tracey Moffatt, Sadie Benning, Moira Sullivan, and Isaac Julien among others finding experimental format conducive to their questions about identity politics.

The

Beginning in 1946, Frank Stauffacher ran the "Art in Cinema" program of experimental and avant-garde films at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

From 1949 to 1975, the Festival international du cinéma expérimental de Knokke-le-Zoute — located in Knokke-Heist, Belgium — was the most proeminant festival of experimental cinema in the World. It permits the discovery of American avant-garde in 1958 with Brakhage's films and many others European and American filmmakers.

From 1947 to 1963, the New York-based Cinema 16 functioned as the primary exhibitor and distributor of experimental film in the United States. Under the leadership of Amos Vogel and Marcia Vogel, Cinema 16 flourished as a nonprofit membership society committed to the exhibition of documentary, avant-garde, scientific, educational, and performance films to ever-increasing audiences.

In 1962 Jonas Mekas and about 20 other film makers founded The Film-Makers' Cooperative in New York City. Soon similar artists cooperatives were formed in other places: Canyon Cinema in San Francisco, the London Film-Makers' Co-op, and Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Center.

Following the model of Cinema 16, experimental films have been exhibited mainly outside of commercial theaters in small

Several other organizations in both Europe and North America helped develop experimental film. These included Anthology Film Archives in New York City, The Millennium Film Workshop, the British Film Institute in London, the National Film Board of Canada and the Collective for Living Cinema.

Some of the more popular film festivals, such as Ann Arbor Film Festival, the New York Film Festival's "Views from the Avant-Garde" Side Bar and the International Film Festival Rotterdam prominently feature experimental works.

The New York Underground Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, the LA Freewaves Experimental Media Arts Festival, MIX NYC the New York Experimental Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and Toronto's Images Festival also support this work and provide venues for films which would not otherwise be seen. There is some dispute about whether "underground" and "avant-garde" truly mean the same thing and if challenging non-traditional cinema and fine arts cinema are actually fundamentally related.^{[citation needed]}

Venues such as Anthology Film Archives,

Recently Pacific Film Archive eliminated their experimental Tuesday night program. The new curator (since 2000) of the Whitney stated in a 2001 interview on Charlie Rose that he believed it was the responsibility of the Anthology Film Archives to show the work because the work is essentially unsellable and the Whitney was not interested in "renting" video art and films. He went on to intimate that it would fall out of favor in coming biennials. (PBS/Charlie Rose).^[citation needed]

Some distributors of experimental film today include Le Collectif Jeune Cinema, Cinédoc and Light Cone ^[7] in Paris, Canyon Cinema in San Francisco, Canadian Filmmaker's Distribution Centre, The Film-Makers' Cooperative in New York, and Lux in London. Sixteen mm prints are still available through these organisations. All these associations and movements are permit the birth and development of national experimental films and schools like “body cinema” ("Écoles du corps" or "Cinéma corporel") and “post-structural” movements in France, and “structural/materialism" in England for example.^[8]

Influences on commercial media

Though experimental film is known to a relatively small number of practitioners, academics and connoisseurs, it has influenced and continues to influence cinematography, visual effects and editing.

The genre of

Many experimental filmmakers have also made feature films, and vice versa. Notable examples include Kathryn Bigelow, Curtis Harrington, Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman, Jean Cocteau, Isaac Julien, Sally Potter, David Lynch, Gus Van Sant and Luis Buñuel, although the degree to which their feature filmmaking takes on mainstream commercial aesthetics differs widely.

See also

• List of film formats
• Microcinema
• New media art
• Performance art
• Underground film
• Video art
• Cinema pur
• Remodernist film
• Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941
• Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s

Key critical texts

• A. L. Rees, A History of Experimental Film and Video (BFI, 1999).
• Malcolm Le Grice, Abstract Film and Beyond (MIT, 1977).
• Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema, Volumes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988, 1992, 1998, 2005 and 2006).
• Scott MacDonald, Avant-Garde Film: Motion Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
• James Peterson, Dreams of Chaos, Visions of Order: Understanding the American Avant-Garde Cinema (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994).
• Jack Sargeant, Naked Lens: Beat Cinema (Creation, 1997).
• P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974).
• Michael O’Pray, Avant-Garde Film: Forms, Themes and Passions (London: Wallflower Press, 2003).
• David Curtis (ed.), A Directory of British Film and Video Artists (Arts Council, 1999).
• David Curtis, Experimental Cinema - A Fifty Year Evolution. (London. Studio Vista. 1971)
• Wheeler Winston Dixon, The Exploding Eye: A Re-Visionary History of 1960s American Experimental Cinema. (Albany, NY. State University of New York Press, 1997)
• Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster (eds.) Experimental Cinema - The Film Reader, (London: Routledge, 2002)
• Stan Brakhage. Film at Wit's End - Essays on American Independent Filmmakers. (Edinburgh, Polygon. 1989)
• Stan Brakhage. Essential Brakhage - Selected Writings on Filmmaking. (New York, McPherson. 2001)
• Parker Tyler, Underground Film: A Critical History. (New York: Grove Press, 1969)
• Jackie Hatfield, Experimental Film and Video (John Libbey Publishing, 2006; distributed in North America by Indiana University Press)
• Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema (Dutton, 1970; available as pdf at Ubuweb)

External links

• Hi-Beam: site for experimental cinema
• Ann Arbor Film Festival - one of World's Premier Experimental Film Fests
• Chicago Underground Film Festival - Annual festival of underground, experimental and documentary film
• Retrospective about X Films, an experimental production company founded in Spain in the sixties
• Anthology Film Archives
• Collectif Jeune Cinema The first born (in 1971) French cooperative for the distribution and promotion of different and experimental cinema.
• Lightcone The most important French coop.
• Cinédoc, Another French coop.
• Film-Makers Coop
• Cinovid, database for experimental film and video art
• San Francisco Cinematheque, showcasing experimental film and video since 1961
• Canyon Cinema, excellent source for experimental film rentals
• GreenCine primer on Experimental/Avant-Garde film
• British Artists' Film & Video Study Collection
• Flicker, which includes many resources on experimental film and links to the online discussion group FrameWorks
• Fred Camper's archive - articles on Stan Brakhage and other experimental film
• Avant-garde/Experimental Film Webring: some two dozen sites related to experimental film
• Animate Projects
• Experimental Film, Mediateca Media Art Space
• Confusion Circles: The cinema of visual artists, Mediateca Media Art Space
• French Portal of Experimental Films and New Medias
• Centre for Visual Music : Experimental film's archives
• News, books, films

Notes