Experimental Film
Experimental film focuses on form rather than classic narrative preoccupations. It exists outside the ordinary production and distribution circuit of commercial movies. The origins of experimental film go back to the second decade of the twentieth century and the first Futurist manifestos on film. It followed the avant-garde movements from Dada (Entr'acte by René Clair and Francis Picabia, 1924) to Surrealism (An Andalusian Dog, by Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel, 1928). this "pure" cinema, rooted in Paris and Berlin, was to establish the forms that followed through the works of Man Ray, Hans Richter, Germaine Dulac, and Fernand Léger. After a second wave, notably with Maya Deren on the 1940s, a revival took place in the 1960s in San Francisco and New York, owing in particular to the availability of new film formats (8 and 16 mm) that reduced production costs. Among the main filmmakers of this "New American Cinema" were Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekas, Gregory Markopoulos, Andy Warhol, Bruce Conner, Carl Linder, and Stan Brakhage. In 1962, Jonas Mekas and others created the Filmmakers' Cooperative as a parallel organization for the distribution of independent film, including the works of experimental filmmakers. Other North American filmmakers who have been influential in the development of experimental images include Paul Sharits, Michael Snow, and Hollis Frampton. In France during the 1950s, the films of Jean Mitry or the Lettristes Isidore Isou, Maurice Lemaître, and Guy Debord involved a certain amount of experimentation, and even films without images. The 1970s saw the growing ranks of the experimental filmmakers joined by artists such as Pol Bury, Martial Raysse, Christian Boltanski, and Jacques Monory.
Bibliography: Jonas Mekas, Movie Journal (New York: Collier Books, 1972).