The Palgrave Handbook Of Experimental Cinema

This book is a collection of newly commissioned essays by established and emerging scholars that maps out the current landscape of experimental cinema studies and sets agendas for future work in the field. Introducing new critical methodologies and calling overdue attention to neglected artists, regions, and topics, the contributions to this volume reassess and reassert experimental cinema as a site of formal exploration and interrogation as well as resistance to institutional, political, and social norms. This collection articulates what it means for experimental cinema to be these things in the contemporary moment, staking out new directions in thinking about the subject not only as a growing sub-field of cinema studies, but as an artistic and scholarly tradition in dialogue with art history, visual culture, philosophy, and the sciences. The contributions reflect a diversity of voices and perspectives, weaving together theoretical, poetic, and personal modes of writing and traversing questions of form, emotion, materiality, national, postcoloniality, the body, and ecology.

This handbook is an essential creative, critical and practical guide for students and educators of screen production internationally. It covers all aspects of screen production—from conceptualizing ideas and developing them, to realizing and then distributing them—across all forms and formats, including fiction and non-fiction for cinema, television, gallery spaces and the web. With chapters by practitioners, scholars and educators from around the world, the book provides a comprehensive collection of approaches for those studying and teaching the development and production of screen content. With college and university students in mind, the volume purposely combines theory and practice to offer a critically informed and intellectually rich guide to screen production, shaped by the needs of those working in education environments where ‘doing’ and ‘thinking’ must co-exist. The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production fills an important gap in creative-critical knowledge of screen production, while also providing practical tools and approaches for future practitioners.

This book assesses the contemporary status of photochemical film practice against a backdrop of technological transition and obsolescence. It argues for the continued relevance of material engagement for opening up alternative ways of seeing and sensing the world. Questioning narratives of replacement and notions of fetishism and nostalgia, the book sketches out the contours of a photochemical renaissance driven by collective passion, creative resistance and artistic reinvention. Celluloid processes continue to play a key role in the evolution of experimental film aesthetics and this book takes a personal journey into the work of several key contemporary film artists. It provides fresh insight into the communities and infrastructures that sustain this vibrant field and mobilises a wide range of theoretical perspectives drawn from media archaeology, new materialism, ecocriticism and social ecology.

Brings together key writings on American avant-garde cinema to explore the long tradition of underground filmmaking from its origins in the 1920s to the work of contemporary film and video artists.

"This new edition covers the history of avante-garde film and video, ranging from Cezanne and dada, via Cocteau, Brakhage and Le Grice, to the new wave of British video artists in the 1990s. The author also reconstitutes the avante-garde film as an independent form of art practice with its own internal logic and aesthetic discourse."--

Avant-garde film is almost indefinable. It is in a constant state of change and redefinition. In his highly-acclaimed history of experimental film, A.L. Rees tracks the movement of the film avant-garde between the cinema and modern art (with its postmodern coda). But he also reconstitutes the film avant-garde as an independent form of art practice with its own internal logic and aesthetic discourse. In this revised and updated edition, Rees introduces experimental film and video to new readers interested in the wider cinema, as well as offering a guide to enthusiasts of avant-garde film and new media arts. Ranging from Cézanne and Dada, via Cocteau, Brakhage and Le Grice, to the new wave of British film and video artists from the 1990s to the present day, this expansive study situates avant-garde film between the cinema and the gallery, with many links to sonic as well as visual arts. The new edition includes a review of current scholarship in avant-garde film history and includes updated reading and viewing lists. It also features a new introduction and concluding chapter, which assess the rise of video projection in the gallery since the millennium, and describe new work by the latest generation of experimental film-makers. The new edition is richly illustrated with images of the art works discussed.

An exploration of what experimental cinema was, is, and might become A Companion to Experimental Cinema is a collection of original essays organized around both theoretical and historical issues of concern to film scholars, programmers, filmmakers, and viewers. Newly-commissioned essays written by specialists in the field, along with dialogues conducted with a diverse range of practitioners, focus on core subjects to present an international array of overlapping and contrasting perspectives. This unique text not only provides detailed accounts of particular films and filmmakers, but also discusses new approaches of understanding, characterizing, and shaping experimental cinema. The Companion offers readers an accessible point of entry to the material while seeking to contribute to scholarly debates. Essays explore a wide range of topics within the realm of experimental film, including the shift from traditional biography to broader contexts, the increased attention afforded to local and transnational circuits of exchange, and the deepening of theoretical considerations regarding cultural identity and cinematic aesthetics. Key themes and concepts are inter-woven throughout the text, offering fresh perspectives on experimental cinema’s dialogues with other modes and practices of film and video, its interactions with the non-cinematic arts, its responses to changing technological landscapes, and more. An essential addition to the field, the Companion: Balances introductory summaries and scholarly dialogue with existing literature Explores how the study of experimental cinema can benefit from scholarship in other disciplines Includes numerous analyses of films that are readily available to view via digital media Discusses both canonical and obscure or neglected works Examines the effects of the growing diversification of experimental film scholarship A Companion to Experimental Cinema is a valuable resource for scholars of film studies and art history, curators and programmers, critics and bloggers, filmmakers and artists, and anyone interested in exploring experimental or avant-garde cinema.