FM4 - Spectatorship - Experimental and Expanded Film/Video

Patrick Phillips is Chief Examiner for A Level Film Studies, his understanding in the area of meaning and response, the relationship between film text and spectator, as well as counter cinema may prove useful in developing your critical responses to this topic.

Experimental film handles time in quite bizarre ways, unlike mainstream cinema logic. Often there is the sense of being outside of time, or perhaps, being in a sort of dream time.

Space is often problematic in experimental film, location is often vague and can have the sense of a theatrical set or, as above, a sense of being in a dream landscape. Some films, often those dealing in abstract shapes, are more about the interaction of light and space.

Causality is often nowhere to be found, there is an incoherence and illogicality that appears to defy the normal rules of cause and effect. This defiance or refusal of logic is one of the major generic signifiers of experimental film as is its insistence that the only logic is the logic of dreams.

It is perfectly possible in the more abstract forms of experimental or expanded Cinema for there to be no characters at all. They are often people free zones. Characters, if they appear, will often seem trapped in a range of behaviours that may seem to us spectators without either motivation, coherence or any definable logic. They can appear rather like the puppet creatures of an unknown and indecipherable puppet master.

In experimental cinema an obvious narrative is generally dispensed with in favour of something far more problematic and challenging. It is often as if the jigsaw of narrative has been scattered to the four winds. In some people free films there is no narrative to be discovered at all except perhaps to speculate where the joins come in a looped film.

Making meaning is the kernel of the problem for the spectator at a showing of experimental or expanded Cinema. The spectator is bereft of the usual genre signifiers which in mainstream cinema help him or her with responses. Basically the spectator is unsure as to what mode of reception he should settle into.

• Should she attempt to make sense of what she’s viewing or should she abandon logics and attempt to make aesthetic sense of what is before her?
• Should she read the gallery catalogue and count the number of artwords she does not understand?
• She probably often exists in a continual state of interpretive confusion or uncertainty.

While there can be suspense and emotion generated by experimental cinema it is not usually its principal aim or concern. Images can be particularly powerful and visceral, think of the cutting of that eyeball in 'The Andalusian Dog', however, experimental cinema is more often described as challenging or unsettling as the imagery and construction is often powerful enough to produce these mental and emotional states in the spectator. Conversely there is, all too often, a take it or leave it approach to the spectator in that his comfort, her interests are not catered to at all.

Running times of experimental cinema rarely conform to mainstream practice. Only 'Man with a Movie Camera' and 'Run Lola Run' seem to have been intended for the general cinema goer. Andy Warhol’s film which watches the Manhattan skyline for hours and hours and hours and hours certainly does not conform.

The phrase, determining limits to originality, would be loathed by those involved in experimental cinema. Genre conventions would be equally despised and only hinted at to be subverted.

The aim is never to provide cosy recognition for the audience, rather they are to be made uncomfortable and unsettled.

While some experimental or expanded Cinema can seem more like hard work than pleasure, much of this genre continues to offer pleasure but pleasure of a more cerebral and aesthetic sort. It can also help break the mould of conventional ways of seeing and experiencing the moving image which can be life enhancing in that it expands modes of consciousness. It can also, through its modes of expression, be importantly memorable in the way that good poetry is. Indeed, it can often aspire to the condition of great music.