Avant-garde and experimental film, also underground and expanded film, exist on the boundary between fine art and film studies. This module explores how experiment in formal, social and philosophical terms has been understood in film practice and theory and how historically this has influenced trends in film as a whole.

Students will be able to:

·         carry out a close textual analysis of non-narrative moving images and sounds

·         explain the historical aesthetic and social context in which avant-garde and experimental films have been produced and viewed

·         discuss and debate the concepts which are tested by and through experimental filmmaking

·         relate experimental filmmaking to current debates on perception and film as research

The first three seminars will discuss the films of Dada and Surrealist artists (Man Ray, Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, Luis Bunuel, Fernand Leger, Maya Deren).

The second three seminars will discuss postwar structuralist, materialist and underground films (Kurt Kren, Peter Gidal, Stan Brackhage, Michael Snow and Kenneth Anger).

The last three seminars will discuss the postmodern, particularly feminist experiments (Yvonne Rainer, Valie Export, and Chantal Ackermann).

The final seminar will discuss whether digitising these films and videos, fundamentally changes their nature.

Films discussed on the module will be screened, sometimes more than once, and the class will be encouraged to engage in close textual analysis together as the films are discussed. Students will research the historical background to the film and discuss the political and social implications of film experiments in class. Students will opt to give a presentation on a particular film and lead a discussion on it in class. Finally students will write a long essay on a particular kind of experiment or underground practice referring to several examples, bringing together analysis with historical and theoretical knowledge. Students interested in practice will be encouraged to include an experimental film of their own in their presentation.

Stan Brakhage, (1989) Film at Wit's End - Essays on American Independent Filmmakers, ( Edinburgh , Polygon)

Stan Brakhage, (2001) Essential Brakhage - Selected Writings on Filmmaking, ( New York , McPherson).

David Curtis, (1971) Experimental Cinema: a fifty-year evolution, ( London , Studio Vista)

Stephen Foster, (2000) Hans Richter: Activism, Modernism and the Avant-Garde,

Peter Gidal, (1989) Materialist Film, ( London , Routledge)

Rudolf  E. Kuenzli, (1996) Dada and Surrealist Film, Cambridge Mass. , MIT)

Malcolm Le Grice, (1977) Abstract Film and Beyond ( Cambridge Mass. , MIT).

Scott MacDonald, (1993)  Avant-Garde Film: Motion Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Michael O’Pray, (2003) Avant-Garde Film: Forms, Themes and Passions ( London : Wallflower Press).

Yvonne Rainer, (2006) Feelings are Facts, ( Cambridge Mass. , MIT)

A. L. Rees, (1999)  A History of Experimental Film and Video ( London , BFI).

P. Adams Sitney, (1974) Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, (New York: Oxford University Press).

Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster (eds.) (2002) Experimental Cinema - The Film Reader, ( London : Routledge)

Gene Youngblood, (1970) Expanded Cinema ( New York , Dutton).