Thursday, April 3, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Instructor: Jesse Pires, Executive Director, Lightbox Film Center
“The official cinema all over the world is running out of breath. It is morally corrupt, aesthetically obsolete, thematically superficial, temperamentally boring.” So wrote iconoclastic filmmaker Jonas Mekas in his manifesto for the New American Cinema Group from 1960. In film, as is true of any art form, there have always been artists driven to experiment with the medium and challenge the status quo. The avant-garde film movement in the United States entered its most fruitful period in the years following World War II, eventually reaching a crescendo in the late ‘60s with the rise of the counterculture. Pioneers such as Maya Deren, Robert Frank, and Kenneth Anger drew inspiration from the revolutionary spirit in the zeitgeist and led a movement that eventually influenced the commercial movie industry they had originally shunned.
Presented as an overview of a much larger field of study, this seminar will explore the many facets of American avant-garde cinema as it evolved in opposition to the commercial film industry during the postwar period. With context and guidance from the instructor, students will watch short films exemplifying forms such as the “trance film,” the “found footage film,” and the turn toward “expanded cinema.” It is intended to be a spirited and informative discourse on the pleasures and challenges of viewing unconventional moving-image art.
$25 for members, $35 for non-members
Schedule