Module description
Radical in form and risky in subject matter, American underground films have also been called ‘avant-garde’ and ‘experimental.’ Made individually by artists, and shown, by and large, outside of commercial theatres, these are art films of a radically different kind to art or independent cinema. The American film critic, J. Hoberman, has described the underground film of the 1950s and 1960s as “distinguishable from earlier modes of experimental cinema by its mixture of wilful primitivism, taboo-breaking sexual explicitness—both hetero- and homosexual—and obsessive ambivalence regarding American popular culture.” This module begins by tracing the historical development of the American underground cinema from the early post-war period to the late-1960s. Films made by artists such as Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, George Kuchar, Carolee Schneemann, Jack Smith and Andy Warhol will be examined both in relationship to the social and cultural milieu in which they emerged, and in relationship to movements within contemporary art (abstract expressionism, pop art, minimalism). While half of the films we will study on this module were made in the 1960s, we will also look at some of the different directions that American artists’ work in film has taken since the late-1960s: from Paul Sharits’s flicker films to Sadie Benning’s and Cheryl Dunye’s self-portraits.
Note that Chelsea Girls and Flaming Creatures contain violent and violent sexual content.
Assessment details
Participation (15%), 1 x 2000-word essay (25%), 1 x 3000-word essay (60%)
Educational aims & objectives
This module aims to provide an understanding of the artistic, social, and institutional context for the development of an underground and/or experimental cinema in the U.S. in the post-war period. Students will examine 1) the relationship between underground cinema and other forms of cinema and contemporary art 2) the pattern of exhibition for underground films 3) the development of critical writing on and theorisation of experimental film/art practices, and 4) the major modes of underground and/or experimental cinema.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module students will be able to:
• Demonstrate understanding of the artistic and social context in which underground cinema developed in the post-war period in the U.S.
• Discuss how ideas in one field of art intersected with another and what the social and institutional conduits for that cross-fertilization were.
• Apply the skills of formal analysis to engage critically with underground films.
• Be able to identify and articulate the stakes of theoretical debates, arguments, and controversies, which arose over particular films or particular modes of filmmaking.
• Produce historically situated analyses of individual films.
Teaching pattern
The module will be taught via ten 2-hour screenings and ten 2-hour seminars.
Suggested reading list
Core reading is provided in a course pack.