Visit the Film Studies website of Benton Park School here for some useful comment and links for 'Experimental & Expanded Cinema'.
Mnemonic for experimental film:
If Cats Can’t Climb Randy Monkeys Steal
All Their Sex Gadgets.
Interpretative framework which might mean Gallery, Cinema, Art house Cinema, Gallery guide booklet, the suggestion of generic codes.
Comfort zone, a deliberate attempt on the part of the filmmaker to make the Spectator uncomfortable by the use of distasteful content or his refusal to offer any narrative or generic cues.
Causality and Coherence, which means the film does not appear to follow the usual mainstream notions of cause and effect, neither does the film come together in its various parts to make clear sense.
Characters, there may be none, or if there are any they may lack any of the usual motivations, often behaving repetitively.
Repetitive, the film may simply be a loop, or characters perform actions which are repetitive but with slight variations.
Motivation, the Spectator does not know why the characters do what they do, characters seem robotic or even somnambulist, the why of their behaviour is a Mystery.
Space. Settings or mise en scène are often vague or highly theatrical and may even be unreliable in that they can change in an apparently arbitrary fashion.
Abstract, the film may be completely without realist images of any sort, simply a collection of moving abstract shapes, lines and colours for example, Walt Disney’s Fantasia.
Time, time may be constructed in weird ways, sometimes using real-time which makes the film’s running time exceptionally long as is the case with some of Andy Warhol’s films. Jumping about along the timeline is also a feature.
Symbolism, films often borrow heavily from Freudian and Jungian ideas of the dream so that objects within the film supposedly take on potent meanings. Surrealism, the rejection of realism in favour of the dreamlike, is also often present.
Genre, the usual genre signifiers are absent or else subverted. It could also be said that experimental cinema through the use of any or all of the above tropes signs itself generically as experimental.
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