Programme 11: Experimental Film

Experimental film has a long and complex history; emerging during the inception of film technologies during the end of the 19th century and growing up in parallel with the more dominant forms of narrative and documentary. Whilst drawing on both these traditions, experimental film-makers and artists also sought to establish their own unique techniques and tropes, firmly rejecting what might be perceived as literary forms, in favour of the poetic and rhythmic potential of the medium as well as exploring the possibilities of abstraction and non-representation and the expression of alternative political ideologies. A survey of the multiple approaches and forms of the genre includes a complex diversity of approaches and themes and features a rigorous experimentation with the formal qualities of the medium, as well as a celebration of the potential of film (and sound) as a fluid and plastic medium with extraordinary expressive and persuasive emotional power.

Video art emerged much later, towards the middle of the twentieth century, initially as a direct response to television as a ubiquitous and dominant influence on the domestic landscape. Early work in the genre by artists centred on the rejection of conventional broadcast television and included efforts to create radical alternatives to the one-way diffusion of information and propaganda by governments and large corporations. During the 1970‘s and 80‘s, as television technology developed to include methods for the recording and editing of the video signal, artists and media activists took up the increasingly accessible and affordable equipment to explore the capabilities and potential of this electronic medium beyond the broadcast domain to alternative venues, including galleries and museums. As video technologies and techniques improved to approach the flexibility and capabilities of film- especially once it became possible to process the video image digitally, the two forms have increasingly merged, sharing approaches and cross - fertilising two formerly distinct but related genres into what for many is now perhaps more accurately characterised as time based-media.

Chris Meigh-Andrews, May 2020.

Experimental film, experimental cinema or avant-garde cinema is a term used to define film-making that explores non-narrative forms and alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working.

The writer and artist Chris Meigh-Andrews has selected works by Andrew Demirjian (USA), Robert Cahen (France), Narsica Hirsch (Argentina) and Ruben Guzman (Argentina), Tessa Garland (UK), Masayuki Kwai (Japan), Vince Briffa (Malta), Madelon Hooykaas (Netherlands), Jacques Perconte (France), Stuart Moore & Kayla Parker (UK), Visual Brains (Sei Kazama & Ohtsue Hatsune) (Japan), Terry Flaxton (UK).