Experimental Film
This short video from CineFix gives a good overview of Experimental Film and its’s impact on Mainstream, including clips from Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger…
“To be perfectly honest, experimental film can feel boring and pretentious if you're not in the EXACT right mood for it. But the art form is cinema at its most uninhibited and it does not exist in a vacuum. Intentionally pushing the boundaries of mainstream film, experimentalism might have had more of an impact on the stuff you love than you might think. So let's check out some of the telltale signs of experimental film.”
This is another good essay video on Experimental Video. You might want to consider this approach for your own essay’s?
Art in Cinema
From 1946 until 1954, the San Francisco-based film society Art in Cinema presented programs of independent film to audiences at the San Francisco Museum of Art and the University of California, Berkeley. Led by filmmaker Frank Stauffacher, Art in Cinema's programs pioneered the promotion of avant-garde cinema in America.
Scott MacDonald's book "Art in Cinema" (2006) details these complete programs as presented by the legendary society. These programs give a great overview of early experimental and avant-garde cinema.
Excerpt from book below, which lists these films shown.
Program Announcement for Art in Cinema’s First Series, 9/46
’The catalogue will include articles by Luis Bunuel, Henry Miller, Oskar Fischinger, John and James Whitney, Maya Deren, and Man Ray. A short bibliography will be included. We hope that this series will accomplish several purposes: that it will show the relation between the film and the other art media—sculpture, painting, poetry; that it will stimulate interest in the film as a creative art medium in itself, requiring more of an effort of participation on the part of the audience than the Hollywood fantasies, before which an audience sits passively and uncreatively; and that it will give assistance to those contemporary artists who labor in obscurity in America with no distribution channels for their work’
Sept. 27 - Precursors to the Avant-garde Film.
Includes some very early Skladanowsky primitives (1896), a sequence from THE GOLEM, and Robert Wiene’s THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI.
Oct. 4 The French Avant-garde.
Includes BALLET MECANIQUE by Fernand Leger, ENTR’ACTE by Rene Clair, SMILING MADAME BEUDET by Germaine Dulac, and MENILMONTANTE by Dmitri Kirsanov.
Oct. 11 Continental Avant-garde.
Includes the famous EMAK BAKIA by Man Ray, UBERFALL by Erno Metzner, and COQUILLE ET CLERGYMAN (THE SEA SHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN) by Germaine Dulac.
Oct. 18 Non-objective Form Synchronized with Music.
The complete available works of Oskar Fischinger, and RHYTHM IN LIGHT by Mary Ellen Butte.
Oct. 25 The Animated Film as an Art Form.
Includes early work of Viking Eggeling and Walt Disney, together with some unusual contemporary developments, with Hans Richter’s RHYTHMUS 21.
Nov. 1 Contemporary Experimental Films in America.
Includes Maya Deren’s latest film, RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME, the complete works of John and James Whitney and others.
Nov. 8 Fantasy into Documentary.
Includes Alberto Cavalcanti’s RIEN QUE LES HEURES, Walther Ruttmann’s BERLIN, and Ralph Steiner’s THE CITY.
Nov. 15 Experiments in the Fantastic and the Macabre.
Includes Jean Epstein’s FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, and Man Ray’s MYSTERES DU CHATEAU DU DE.
Nov. 22 Poetry in Cinema.
LE SANG D’UN POETE (BLOOD OF A POET) by Jean Cocteau.
Nov. 29 The Surrealists.
Includes the most famous of surrealist films: UN CHIEN ANDALOU by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, together with Marcel Duchamp’s ANAEMIC CINEMA, and Hans Richter’s latest film (tentative).
GET FULL BOOK HERE: Art in Cinema : Documents Toward a History of the Film Society (2006) - Scott MacDonald, Frank Stauffacher is available as pdf on Monoskop (a wiki for the arts, media and humanities)
Experimental Film co operatives / groups …
THE NEW AMERICAN CINEMA GROUP / FILM-MAKERS' COOPERATIVE (NACG) WAS FOUNDED IN 1961 FOR THE DISTRIBUTION OF AVANT-GARDE FILM
The London Film-makers' Co-op, or LFMC, was a British film-making workshop founded in 1966. It ceased to exist in 1999 when it merged with London Video Arts to form LUX.
In his essay Life Before the Co-op, David Curtis discusses The British Avant-Garde Film 1945-66.
Bristol Experimental Expanded Film (BEEF) is a film and sound collective supporting experimental practice in Bristol since 2015.
BEEF provides an independent platform and much needed resource for artists’ production, distribution and critical engagement, predominantly focusing on experimental and analogue practices. BEEF members collaborate and work together to organise a regular programme of events, screenings, performances, exhibitions, residencies, and film & sound workshops.
See:
GO, GO, GO! Women in Experimental Animation – an Essay by Vicky Smith
A superb in depth essay reflecting on the breadth of practice of women working in experimental animation from 1954 to the present day, encompassing the USA, Europe and Australia. Read here
Persian Pickles (2012, 3m, 16mm, color, sound) - Jodie Mack
A swimming study of paisley patterns traces this decorative motif from its origins in Persian weavings to appearances Irish quilting and American Counterculture. Extending on the stroboscopic tradition of anti-animation, this short material study fixates upon discarded materials to examine the decorative and its relationship to the cycles of industry and evolving modes of production.
Animated instructional photographs from yoga and workout books reveal bewitched and frenzied bodies and maneuvers. Exercising women move through a possessed psychic space that distorts and mirrors some of our daily routines. Their bodies point to haunted forces may lay behind a fevered sense of wellness.