Dear Jonathan,
I mostly agree with what you wrote too, including your disagreement with
me. You are getting at many important nuances. I'm not a huge fan of
Rose Lowder's films, but when I heard her introduce her work as
"experimental," as in, "I make these not certain of what I am going to
get," I had to acknowledge, in accordance with my "dogma" that there are
no rules for making art, that her position is as valid as any other.
Certainly seeing my first "avant-garde" film at 15 felt like an
"avant-garde" experience, in that I had never seen anything like it.
Most single screen work being made in decades since, however, does seem
to be working, at least on a superficial viewing, within existing
traditions.
In my experience with young film students reared on a diet of YouTube
and the rest, most are not all that surprised by anything.
Fred Camper
Chicago
On 3/2/2021 10:11 AM, Jonathan Walley wrote:
I agree with everything Fred says here, with one exception, I guess.
/Un Chien Andalou/ (or /Mothlight/, or /Meshes of the Afternoon/, etc.
etc. etc.) is still avant-garde to an 18-year-old hayseed in an intro
film class. Generally “avant-garde” is thought of as an historical
designation and so, as Fred implies “It might work in a repressive
country in which you could not really show your films”), but I also
tend to think of it as an effect. In that case, the relevant history
is not global, but personal - the history of the hayseed.
[I know “hayseed” is impolite, but I just mean it as blanket term for
innocent eyes, and after all, I do teach in Ohio].
I do think that underground is more specific than experimental or
avant-garde, with historically-bound connotations (certain variants of
experimental film output of the 1960s into the early 1980s, with punk
film and the cinema of transgression as examples). While I am wary of
the implication of “experimental” to which Fred alludes (as in,
“they’re just experimenting; eventually they’ll get it right”), I
still think it’s the least loaded, most neutral term to encompass a
cinematic tradition that, if heterogeneous to the point of anarchy, is
nonetheless discernible. “Underground” and “avant-garde” can be
considered sub-categories, I suppose.
For what it’s worth…
JW
Jonathan Walley
Associate Professor
Department of Cinema
Denison University
https://denison.edu/people/jonathan-walley
<https://denison.edu/people/jonathan-walley>
On Mar 2, 2021, at 10:53 AM, Fred Camper <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I've given this issue, along with that of "experimental," more
thought than it perhaps deserves.
I don't think "underground" works at all today. It only barely worked
in the 60s. It might work in a repressive country in which you could
not really show your films. Our culture, whatever one thinks of it,
has become too open and too diverse for this word. But I don't think
"avant-garde" works either. So much has been done; most filmmakers
are working within existing traditions. Nor is "experimental" of much
use, except for a minority who, for better or for worse, feel that
the word is right for them. A response to that word from one
filmmaker decades ago: "I made many experiments while working on this
film. I left them behind in my editing room. What you will see is a
finished work."
On the other hand, just calling these works "films" doesn't work
either; your viewers will be for most such films be disappointed to
find no evidence of Batman, or Luke Skywalker, or similarFrame. We
need a neologism, but I have never found one.
Fred Camper
Chicago
On 3/2/2021 2:33 AM, Jaime Cleeland wrote:
Hi,
How would y’all differentiate between calling a filmmaker
‘Underground’ as opposed to ‘Avant-Garde’?
Best,
Jaime
Sent from my iPad
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