November 10, 2004
From: Victor Fowler Calzada
To: Mr. Dominic Angerame
Dear Mr. Dominic Angerame:
My name is Victor Fowler and I work in the International School of Film and TV ( Cuba ) as Head of the Department of Publications. We are publishing a digital review on film and television (Miradas), and our main interests is to present a wide vision on these subjects. Our next issue will deal with avant-garde and experimental cinema and I use to visit Canyon Cinema and know about your work. We are sending a pair of questions to experts who could help us to understand the landscape of contemporary experimental cinema.
Thanks for your time. Kind regards.
1. Why to become an experimental filmmaker? Why not to follow a career into the industry (considering salaries, awards, fame...)?
The term experimental is very deceptive. Those filmmakers who explore cinema as an art form, free of the constraints of traditional narrative, are considered to be experimental or avant-garde filmmakers. Neither term is appropriate, since experimental implies that one is just "fooling around" or "experimenting" in a Frankenstenian mode. The term avant-garde is a bit elitist, and implies that one must constantly be negating one's own work and achieving higher artistic goals constantly.
Most experimental filmmakers are interested in pursuing the use of cinema as an art form. The experimental film history springs from a rebellion of the main stream and traditional forms of cinema. That is, the surrealist rebelled against traditional rules of narrative cinema, structure, plot, etc. Experimental filmmakers have artistic concerns of breaking through to new realms of cinematic experience and exposure. Often times the films created through such methods are either not understood, not seen, or outrightly rejected by most of the film going public.
Experimental filmmakers, from my point of view, are passionately involved in attempting to change the way in which we see and experience cinema. This is a challenge for a lot of the cinema audience. As a result, the experimental filmmaker is often marginalized, because the public is seldom exposed to cinematic treatment outside the normal modes of narrative filmmaking.
Many experimental filmmakers do not attempt to "tell stories". Their concerns are more about the cinematic experience, and the exploration of cinema in a realm that is oftentimes uncharted. Therefore there is often lack of recognition, rewards, monetary gain, etc. Experimental filmmakers learn a very big lesson early in their careers, and that is that you make experimental cinema because you are impassioned to do such, and not for singular, monetary, or ego rewards.
2. How could be sustained a circuit of experimental film? Which social actors or institutions should be part of the process?
Experimental Cinema could thrive and expand with the help of educational institutions, Museums, Art Centers, Cultural Centers, and expanded awareness in the media itself. Today there exist a severe lack of exposure to experimental cinema (outside of those stolen techniques applied by MTV). Museums, small showcases, and even mainstream cinemas could easily rent more experimental films from organizations such as Canyon Cinema. Short experimental films could easily be shown before feature films, instead of the endless stream of boring coming attractions, all narrated by the same "put me to sleep voice". Museums could run regular programs of avant garde experimental films on a weekly or daily basis, and have informative introductions to help the audience understand such programs.
I believe that audiences sincerely want new and intriguing work to be shown in theatres...however, it is the timidness and the desire to make money that cause programmers to be very conservative in the films that they decide to show audiences.
3. In recent years interest in experimental films has grow in countries like India . Do you think that experimentation is a kind of natural step in national cinemas or, in this case, another consequence of globalization?
Globalization has helped increase the exposure of experimental cinema TECHNIQUES in such areas at Music Videos, etc. Music Videos have basically appropriated many experimental and avant garde techniques in order to capture an audience's attention so that a music group can sell CD's, or so that the Gap can sell more jeans.
True experimental cinema hopes to capture the imagination of the audience and expand their senses of perception so that the world could be changed in a significant way. In this respect, I think that Globalization has not helped expand the nature of experimental cinema...All it has been able to do is - reduce cinematic creativity to a common denominator, and create another process to expand consumerism...
4. Today experimental techniques are learned in schools (sometimes there are workshops even in middle-schools), and we have a lot of prices, festivals, magazines and so on in the subject. Perhaps we have a rhetoric of experimental cinema? How to differentiate between this and authenticity?
One can easily learn the techniques of making an experimental film. However, the nature of experimental cinema is to constantly re-invent itself, and use the medium in a never ending expansive way. That is, you may learn how to super impose an image, shoot black and white, single frame animation or special effects - however, that will not you make an experimental filmmaker....you will only know how to perform a certain craft.
You can learn to paint through a paint by numbers canvass, this does not mean that you will become another Picasso.....one must explore and commit oneself to the medium, and begin to learn how to use the plastic qualities of cinema as a form of artistic expression that transcends the technique.
5. Considering the developments in the field of video, computing arts, experimental cinema and video-games (as spaces of "audio-visuality"), are we approaching a new type of synthetic art and artist?
Yes, experimental/avant-gard filmmakers are constantly utilizing new technologies of moving images to advance their art form. We are seeing filmmakers combine 16mm film, video, and digital technologies together to create a new type of experimental cinema that has yet to be categorized.
Dominic Angerame
November 17th, 2004