8.3 A LECTURE/P- EXPERIMENTAL - Types of Movies

Moving on to Experimental Film

Types of Movies:
1)Narrative
2)Documentary
3)Experimental

Notes from Anna:
Narrative movies – movies that are directed toward fiction or fictionalized stories

Documentary movies – movies with an allegiance to nonfiction but which still employ movie storytelling and dramatization

Experimental movies– movies that push the boundaries of what most people think movies are or should be

Peter Wollen Two Tendencies for Most Early Experimental Films:

1)One a group of filmmakers closely associated with painting and committed to formal experiment the most radical leaned towards art of pure signifiers detached from meaning as much from reference.

2)A second smaller group around Eisenstein and Vertov whose concern rose from an interest in cinema as a stie for a meditation of social and political concerns.

Fred Camper’s Six Common Criteria for Most Experimental Films
1)Not commercial
2)Personal
3)Do not conform to conventional expectations of story and narrative cause and effect.
4)Exploit the possibilities of cinema
5)Critique culture and media
6)Invite individual interpretation

Other Experimental Film Styles:
1)Stream of consciousness (dream-logic – Surrealist)
2)Style as subject (visual music, Structuralist films)
3)Image as shock
4)Found Footage films – manipulation and recontextualization of preexisting footage

FOUND FOOTAGE EXAMPLE: 

Notes:
Removed (1999). Naomi Uman, director. Naomi Uman’s manipulation of found footage from a pornographic movie forces the viewer to experience the objectification of women in a literal, or at least graphic, sense. 

CREDIT: Removed, © 1999 Naomi Uman.