Spring 2007

WGS 345 • Experimental Film and Video-W

Course Description

A survey history of avant garde films and videos, considered from the perspectives of their variations from Classical Hollywood cinema and their relations to contemporaneous social, political, and aesthetic conditions. Movements covered will include German expressionism, "pure" cinema, French impressionism, dadaism, surrealism, Russian constructivism, and the various US avant gardes of the 1920s to present. Readings will consider contextual determinants as well as provide information about the discursive formations that might inform the production and reception of the films. Readings will also serve to stimulate discussion about issues such as the politics of avant garde cinema, "high" versus "low" art, the possibility of appropriating subject material for different functions, modernism and/or avant garde, and postmodernist film practices. A central question will be the use-value of alternate cinemas.

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