Nicole interactivezinefinal

EXPERIMENTAL FILM its history and its heroes

E

xperimental film has been a celebrated film gernre since the 1920’s. While it did not achieve much commercial succes, it spawned many cult followings and it inspired many fine artists to embrace the medium of film. This guide is meant to show the broad range of these movies.

EARY EXPERIMENTS

NO WAVE

STAN BRAKHAGE

EARLY EXPERIMENTS These films served as the groundwork for future experimental art and films.

R

anging from early explorations of horror to soviet propoganda films, a large group of foeign and american movies layed the foundation for modern experimental films. These movies were eccentric and provocative. Directors relied on symbolism and imagery to provoke the audience and to communicate their message, rather than on traditional techinques of narration.

STAN BRAKHAGE

Using film as his canvas, he created fascinating visuals

S

tan Brakhage made film into a fine art. He would take the physical film and distort it by making marks, adding paint and other layers and textures that helped him create vivid and nightmarish compositions. His interests ranged from documenting human intersaction to recording various elemnts taken from nature. He made over 50 short films over the span of his carrer, most of which were non-narative.

NO WAVE: ANALOG FILM

A genre that pioneered experimentalist values and championed analog aesthetic

A

rising from the ashes of a broken city, the no wave scene revived the New York underground in a period of high crime rates and economic frustration. The filmmakers clung to

“No Wave cinema rejected the traditional definitions of filmmaking� analog production, rather than digital, in order to save money and defy the standards of the movie industry.