FM4 - Spectatorship - Experimental and Expanded Film/Video

Focus of the unit

Understanding will be generated through:

• studying complex films from different contexts, extending knowledge of the diversity of film and its effects.

• exploring spectatorship issues in relation to a particular type of film.

• applying key concepts and critical approaches gained throughout the course to explore how differing approaches to film form demand deeper understanding.

Spectatorship: Experimental and Expanded Film/Video:

The study of radical 'alternatives' to mainstream film form and representation, challenging our sense of how we see and consequently how we respond to audio-visual material. Examples may be taken from both the historical and the contemporary. Where possible candidates should visit galleries and other venues where work is installed in relation to specific physical spaces.

Experimental film or experimental cinema describes a range of filmmaking styles that are generally quite different from, and often opposed to, the practices of mainstream commercial and documentary filmmaking.

"Avant-garde" is also used to describe this work, and "underground" has been used in the past, though it has also had other connotations.

While "experimental" covers a wide range of practice, an "experimental film" is often characterized by the absence of linear narrative, the use of various abstracting techniques (out of focus, painting or scratching on film, rapid editing), the use of asynchronous (non-diegetic) sound or even the absence of any sound track.

The goal is often to place the viewer in a more active and more thoughtful relationship to the film.

At least through the 1960s, and to some extent after, many experimental films took an oppositional stance toward mainstream culture.

Most of these films are made on very low budgets, self-financed or financed through small grants, with a minimal crew or, quite often, a crew of only one person, the filmmaker.

It has been argued that much experimental film is no longer in fact "experimental," but has in fact become a film genre and that many of its more typical features - such as a non-narrative, impressionistic or poetic approaches to the film's construction - define what is generally understood to be "experimental".