An exploration of what experimental cinema was, is, and might become
A Companion to Experimental Cinema is a collection of original essays organized around both theoretical and historical issues of concern to film scholars, programmers, filmmakers, and viewers. Newly-commissioned essays written by specialists in the field, along with dialogues conducted with a diverse range of practitioners, focus on core subjects to present an international array of overlapping and contrasting perspectives. This unique text not only provides detailed accounts of particular films and filmmakers, but also discusses new approaches of understanding, characterizing, and shaping experimental cinema.
The Companion offers readers an accessible point of entry to the material while seeking to contribute to scholarly debates. Essays explore a wide range of topics within the realm of experimental film, including the shift from traditional biography to broader contexts, the increased attention afforded to local and transnational circuits of exchange, and the deepening of theoretical considerations regarding cultural identity and cinematic aesthetics. Key themes and concepts are inter-woven throughout the text, offering fresh perspectives on experimental cinema’s dialogues with other modes and practices of film and video, its interactions with the non-cinematic arts, its responses to changing technological landscapes, and more. An essential addition to the field, the Companion:
- Balances introductory summaries and scholarly dialogue with existing literature
- Explores how the study of experimental cinema can benefit from scholarship in other disciplines
- Includes numerous analyses of films that are readily available to view via digital media
- Discusses both canonical and obscure or neglected works
- Examines the effects of the growing diversification of experimental film scholarship
A Companion to Experimental Cinema is a valuable resource for scholars of film studies and art history, curators and programmers, critics and bloggers, filmmakers and artists, and anyone interested in exploring experimental or avant-garde cinema.
Table of Contents
Contributors vii
1 Introduction 1
Federico Windhausen
Part I Overviews 15
2 Poetry and “Film Poetics” 17
Sarah Keller
3 Cinematic Specificity, Intermediality, and the European Avant-Garde 40
Malcolm Turvey
4 Expanded Cinema: Then and Now 59
Jonathan Walley
5 Sketches of Spain: The Production and Circulation of Spanish Experimental Cinema 84
Josetxo Cerdán and Miguel Fernández Labayen
6 The Underground and the Institution: Spaces and Practices of French Experimental Film (1950-1980) 111
Enrico Camporesi
7 Hollywood as Home Movies: Queer Diaristic Film & Video 136
Jon Davies
8 Nothing Clarifies an Image Like Another Image: New Approaches to Found Footage Filmmaking 160
Erica Levin
9 Disquieting Soundtracks: The Sonorities of Experimental Cinema 182
Juan A. Suárez
10 Music Visualization and Medium Expansion: Key Themes in Experimental Animation 210
Paul Taberham
Part II Case Studies 231
11 Collage, Montage and Assemblage: The Instantaneity of Frames in Gregory J. Markopoulos’ Cinema 233
François Bovier (translated by Miranda Stewart)
12 Experiment, Cybernetics, and the Formal Film in Britain 260
Lucy Reynolds
13 Agitation and Involvement: Narcisa Hirsch’s Come Out and Michael Snow’s Wavelength 284
Federico Windhausen
14 Rebellion of the Body: Hijikata Tatsumi, Performance Documentation and Japanese Experimental Film 307
Julian Ross
15 Feminist Filmmaking from the Ground Up: Three Films from the 1980s 325
Michele Pierson
16 Barbara Hammer, Optical Printing, and a Theory of Touch 349
John Powers
Part III Exchanges 369
17 Approaching India: Remarks on a Diversity of Moving Image Practices 371
Lalitha Gopalan, Shai Heredia, and Shanay Jhaveri
18 On the Visibility of Women’s Experimental Cinema: Birgit Hein and Ute Aurand in Germany 390
Sylvia Schedelbauer
19 “Where Are Those Lines?”: Discussions about and around Experimental Ethnography with Sky Hopinka, Naeem Mohaiemen and Deborah Stratman 410
Jason Fox
20 Platform, Showcase, Gathering, Exchange: A Conversation about Film Festivals with Erika Balsom, George Clark, Chris Kennedy, Eduardo Thomas, and Koyo Yamashita 433
Chris Kennedy
Index 453
