Experimental Film Media

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Since the end of the First World War, artists – poets, painters, sculptors – made non-commercial films to explore the essence of cinematic language. After the Second World War the impetus to make such films migrated to America where an avant-garde cinema continues to flourish. This course will survey the major experimental film movements of the twentieth century, from the European "city symphonies," surrealist visions, and abstract films of the 1920s to the development of the American postwar avant-garde, ending in a discussion of video art from the 1960s to the online viral videos and digital gallery installations of today. It will closely examine the theory, criticism, history, and aesthetics of this alternate film movement. Most of the readings will come from the texts of the filmmakers themselves. Films by Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali, Dziga Vertov, Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Hollis Frampton, Andy Warhol, Su Friedrich, Jonas Mekas and Yvonne Rainer will be among those discussed, as we consider the basic theory and purpose of experimental film and video as compared to narrative and documentary formats.