FM4 Section B: Spectatorship - Experimental & Expanded Film/Video
Experimental films are films that push the boundaries of conventional film making. The experimental aspect could be new and different ways of working the camera, using lighting, playing with audio effects, scripting or even acting.
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 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".
Source: wikipedia
Non-Narrative Film
Perhaps the most significant principle of experimental cinema which unifies both abstract and representational work is the search for structures which do not conform to linear narrative constraints. In this respect, non-linear concepts which relate to the intrinsic feature of Random Access Memory. In particular, Germain Dulac's La Coquille et le Clergyman (1927) or the surrealist cinema of Buñuel and Dali -Un Chien andalou (1928) or L'Age d'or (1930), by attempting to embody a concept of psychological association or dream in the structure of cinema, used montage to establish links which did not describe causal action or a narrative line. However, what serves best as a key work here is Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), not only because of the film but also because Deren herself established a significant theoretical idea in a symposium in 1953 which reinforces the non-linear interpretation of the work. The film explores a complex form of a repeated, dreamlike, symbolic event. At each repetition, small changes expand the spectator's imaginary construction of the symbolic space rather like a spiral through a matrix of action images. The spectator's passage through the film requires each previous 'version' of the action to be reviewed by the next -not replacing it by a more definitive version but deepening the experiential references in a cumulative transformation. The inevitable linearity of the film is used to explore a symbolic space which is not resolved as a causal narrative. In the 1953 symposium, 'Poetry and the Film' Deren, in developing an equivalence between poetry and the poetic film, introduces a concept of 'verticality', an exploration at right angles to the 'horizontal' development of the narrative. She says, referring to Shakespeare, you have the drama moving forward on a 'horizontal' plane of development, of one circumstance -one action -leading to another, and this delineates the character. Every once in a while, however, he arrives at a point of action where he wants to illuminate the meaning of this moment of drama, and, at that moment, he builds a pyramid or investigates it 'vertically'. Then applied to film she says: the short films, to my mind (and they are short because it is difficult to maintain such intensity for a long period of time), are comparable to lyric poems, and they are completely a 'vertical', or what I would call a poetic construct, and they are complete as such.
This search by Maya Deren for both a cinematic form and a theoretical framework for an alternative to the narrative trajectory of the majority of mainstream cinema represents a guide to the development of cinematic models that relate directly to the intrinsic non-linearity of Random Access Memory.
Expanded Cinema
The European interpretation can be characterised by a concern to bring the cinematic experience consciously into the space of the spectator through performed action and installation. Film structures are constructed to allow the spectator a reflexive role or some form of involvement during screening which can or may change the relationship between the artist and the audience towards a more interactive relationship.
Experimental film is very difficult to define. Critics and theorists argue over even defining it as experimental – some prefer avant-garde, underground, alternative etc. However, there are some general conventions:
First you have to consider what is conventional in film? Consider Micro techniques (mise-en-scène, sound, cinematography and editing), funding, distribution, narrative/content, technicians, representation (women, ethnicities, sexuality), audience, promotion, genre etc. What normally occurs and how could film-makers experiment with these different conventions?
What is the difference between mainstream, art cinema and avant-garde? If you’re not sure on definitions, research the terms.
Why does it change our expectations as spectators and how do we react to the different and unusual in film? Consider how you feel when you watch a ‘mainstream’ film and compare it to art cinema or avant-garde?
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 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".
Source: wikipedia
Non-Narrative Film
Perhaps the most significant principle of experimental cinema which unifies both abstract and representational work is the search for structures which do not conform to linear narrative constraints. In this respect, non-linear concepts which relate to the intrinsic feature of Random Access Memory. In particular, Germain Dulac's La Coquille et le Clergyman (1927) or the surrealist cinema of Buñuel and Dali -Un Chien andalou (1928) or L'Age d'or (1930), by attempting to embody a concept of psychological association or dream in the structure of cinema, used montage to establish links which did not describe causal action or a narrative line. However, what serves best as a key work here is Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), not only because of the film but also because Deren herself established a significant theoretical idea in a symposium in 1953 which reinforces the non-linear interpretation of the work. The film explores a complex form of a repeated, dreamlike, symbolic event. At each repetition, small changes expand the spectator's imaginary construction of the symbolic space rather like a spiral through a matrix of action images. The spectator's passage through the film requires each previous 'version' of the action to be reviewed by the next -not replacing it by a more definitive version but deepening the experiential references in a cumulative transformation. The inevitable linearity of the film is used to explore a symbolic space which is not resolved as a causal narrative. In the 1953 symposium, 'Poetry and the Film' Deren, in developing an equivalence between poetry and the poetic film, introduces a concept of 'verticality', an exploration at right angles to the 'horizontal' development of the narrative. She says, referring to Shakespeare, you have the drama moving forward on a 'horizontal' plane of development, of one circumstance -one action -leading to another, and this delineates the character. Every once in a while, however, he arrives at a point of action where he wants to illuminate the meaning of this moment of drama, and, at that moment, he builds a pyramid or investigates it 'vertically'. Then applied to film she says: the short films, to my mind (and they are short because it is difficult to maintain such intensity for a long period of time), are comparable to lyric poems, and they are completely a 'vertical', or what I would call a poetic construct, and they are complete as such.
This search by Maya Deren for both a cinematic form and a theoretical framework for an alternative to the narrative trajectory of the majority of mainstream cinema represents a guide to the development of cinematic models that relate directly to the intrinsic non-linearity of Random Access Memory.
Expanded Cinema
The European interpretation can be characterised by a concern to bring the cinematic experience consciously into the space of the spectator through performed action and installation. Film structures are constructed to allow the spectator a reflexive role or some form of involvement during screening which can or may change the relationship between the artist and the audience towards a more interactive relationship.
Experimental film is very difficult to define. Critics and theorists argue over even defining it as experimental – some prefer avant-garde, underground, alternative etc. However, there are some general conventions:
- ‘By and large, this is film-making without story, characters or plot’ – A. L. Rees
- No budget
- Intensely personal
- Completely different distribution and exhibition (Societies/museum/universities versus cinemas)
- Individual versus team
- Does not have a mass audience ideology/ conventions to consider
First you have to consider what is conventional in film? Consider Micro techniques (mise-en-scène, sound, cinematography and editing), funding, distribution, narrative/content, technicians, representation (women, ethnicities, sexuality), audience, promotion, genre etc. What normally occurs and how could film-makers experiment with these different conventions?
What is the difference between mainstream, art cinema and avant-garde? If you’re not sure on definitions, research the terms.
Why does it change our expectations as spectators and how do we react to the different and unusual in film? Consider how you feel when you watch a ‘mainstream’ film and compare it to art cinema or avant-garde?