American Underground Cinema (Final Year Course)
Semester Spring
Programme description
Risky and experimental, underground films offer spectators experiences that are very different to those encountered in mainstream cinema. Varying greatly in style and subject matter, these personally crafted films range from George Kuchar's lurid melodramas, shot on a borrowed 8mm camera, to Paul Sharits' dazzling flicker films — which attempt, in his words, to 'allow vision to function in ways usually particular to hearing'. At various times, underground films have been described as 'personal', 'experimental', 'independent', 'avant-garde', 'exploitation', and 'cult'. This module begins by tracing the historical development of the American underground cinema from the early postwar period to the mid-1970s. Later weeks focus on the very different institutional circumstances in which experimental filmmakers who began working with film and video in the 1980s and 1990s emerged.
Topics include:
- the key figures, social and cultural movements, and institutions that have collectively created a culture for underground and experimental filmmaking
- the relation between underground filmmaking and experimentation in other arts such as theatre, painting, and music
- filmmakers' explorations of their ideas about art and filmmaking in their own writing
Pre-requisites
You must be a Film Studies or Media Studies major with a cumulative GPA of 3.3
Assessment
The course is taught through ten weekly film screenings, each followed by a two-hour seminar discussion of the film and required readings. Assessment consists of two essays (2,000 words, 3,000 words) and one 15-minute in-class presentation.
Credits
4