On experimental cinema

Last summer, one of my student raised his hand. We had been looking at some films and I had referred to them as experimental. Avant-garde always sounds so enormous and the other cinema doesn't really roll off the tongue. He found the term experimental to be a fraught one and argued that these films often utilise tropes and clichés. He continued to say that although the form may not be mainstream, the film in question doesn't build out the ideas of the form. It just uses the form as a shorthand for experimental. Therefore, these films can't be considered experimental as they do not do what it says on the tin: experiment.

A lot of experimental films I watch involuntarily (meaning: I don't seek them out, I encounter them at festivals) fit my student's argument. Sometimes the inclusion of a film in an experimental program can be a real head-scratcher. I've seen YouTube essays that are more thought-provoking in subject and style than some of those playing in a cinema, but that's something for a different time. And I can definitely see where he is coming from. We're all beholden to the same or, at the very least, similar frame of reference provided by our shared history. We're also susceptible to trends that heavily determine what type of films are shown. Currently, I'm seeing a lot of academic essay films dealing with the trauma of being alive. That's not a dig against these films, but it is what dominates the screen.

Here's a snippet of a recent interview with David Lynch:

“I guess in a weird way, I’d say improvisation is something I don’t use in film, but I definitely use in music,” he says, “especially with this album that Angelo and I did called Thought Gang, where I would talk to these very great studio musicians and I’d tell them a story, a picture to think of, an event to think of, a sequence to think of, and to play that. And let’s go right now, and to just kick it. I’d say ‘It starts off quiet, then it goes from there. You guys just take it.’ Unbelievable experiments like this can conjure so many fantastic things. Then you might say, ‘Well, let’s work on this part of this magic right there, and go from there.’ And you can build into something incredible, which is improvisation or experimentation. I like to call it experimentation.”

The student argued that experimentation is only valid if it's in conversation with the boundaries of the medium. In class, we used Stan Brakhage's technique of painting directly on film as an example. I brought up a film in which I had applied this very technique and said that in a historical context, it might've been a bit milquetoast. As a technique, it's been done to death and my iteration of it did not build on what Brakhage had introduced. However, it was revelatory to me. I had exclusively worked digitally up until that point, so the idea that the image existed in the physical realm and that I could alter it by hand was incredible. To me. I immediately started to consider other ways in which this could be useful. I started printing out sequences frame-by-frame and then scanning them again - the so-called physical intermediate. I used this material in my subsequent film and am using it again for the one I'm currently making. I wouldn't have gotten there if I hadn't made the previous film. I sound like Matt Farley here, but say yes to your ideas. Your ideas are experiments!

Now, have I seen many iterations and applications of Brakhage's direct film? Yes! Have they all been good? Absolutely not. However, experimentation is trying something new. It can be new to the medium, new to a town or even new to the artist. Anything, even the most clichéd thing, can be an experiment for someone. That someone's only responsibilities are to execute the hypotheses and to then inform themselves about their hypotheses. In short, to become aware that there is, in fact, such a thing as a wheel and that this someone, in fact, has not invented said wheel. They've simply realised that there's a different shape out there than a square and have acted upon that conviction. Great! A shape applied in project 1 then inadvertently carries over to project 2, even when it is not used in project 2. Or, in our example: if the squaremaker goes back to squares after his adventure in circles, then the lack of the circle in the rest of his endeavours will shine as bright as the continued development of the square. The wheel might even be known as the worst wheel to have ever been made and that's fine. Failure is fertile ground for development. As long as we utilise our awareness of our place in the world, I guess.

Final note: auteurist readings often devolve into psycho-analysing a stranger, so I'd rather refer to this as the Artist's Project. Wes Anderson probably has a lot of feeling about his family, but it's way more interesting to observe him lean further and further into his formal toolkit. That toolkit says as much about the man as his feelings about his dad. To me, it is much more interesting to witness the application and how it shapes the works around it than to consider it in the context of some biographical detail. But all those readings - autobiographical, historical, formal, etc. - are valid. Ultimately, dogmatism seals the openings we're trying to create.