Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources.
Věra Chytilová was an avant-garde Czech film director and pioneer of Czech cinema. Banned by the Czechoslovak government in the 1960s, she is best known for her Czech New Wave film Sedmikrásky (Daisies). Her subsequent films screened at international film festivals, including Vlčí bouda (1987), which screened at the 37th Berlin International Film Festival, A Hoof Here, a Hoof There (1989), which screened at the 16th Moscow International Film Festival, and The Inheritance or Fuckoffguysgoodday (1992), which screened at the 18th Moscow International Film Festival. For her work, she received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Medal of Merit and the Czech Lion award.
David Edward Gatten is an American experimental filmmaker and moving image artist. Since 1996 Gatten's films have explored the intersection of the printed word and moving image, cataloging the variety of ways in which texts functions in cinema as both language and image, often blurring the boundary between these categories. His 16mm films often employee cameraless techniques, combined with close-up cinematography and optical printing processes. In addition to the ongoing 16mm films, Gatten is now making hybrid 16mm/digital works and has completed an entirely digital feature-length project called The Extravagant Shadows.
Sara Miller Driver is an American independent filmmaker and actress from Westfield, New Jersey. A participant in the independent film scene that flourished in lower Manhattan from the late 1970s through the 1990s, she gained initial recognition as producer of two early films by Jim Jarmusch, Permanent Vacation (1980) and Stranger Than Paradise (1984). Driver has directed two feature films, Sleepwalk (1986) and When Pigs Fly (1993), as well as a notable short film, You Are Not I (1981), and a documentary, Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat (2017), on the young artist's pre-fame life in the burgeoning downtown New York arts scene before the city's massive changes through the 1980s. She served on the juries of various film festivals throughout the 2000s.
The Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema is an international festival of independent films organized each year in the month of April, in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Su Friedrich is an American avant-garde film director, producer, writer, and cinematographer. She has been a leading figure in avant-garde filmmaking and a pivotal force in the establishment of Queer Cinema.
Cristina Kotz Cornejo is an Argentine-American director and screenwriter who divides her time between Boston, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires. She is a descendant of the Huarpe people of the Cuyo region of Argentina and was educated in the US and Argentina.
Lynne Sachs is an American experimental filmmaker and poet living in Brooklyn, New York. Her moving image work ranges from documentaries, to essay films, to experimental shorts, to hybrid live performances. Working from a feminist perspective, Sachs weaves together social criticism with personal subjectivity. Her films embrace a radical use of archives, performance and intricate sound work. Between 2013 and 2020, she collaborated with musician and sound artist Stephen Vitiello on five films.
Marcelo Mosenson is the founder and executive director of the film production company Nomade Films.
Evelyn Lambart was a Canadian animator and film director with the National Film Board of Canada, known for her independent work, and for her collaborations with Norman McLaren.
Reminiscencias is a 2010 Peruvian experimental documentary film written, produced, and directed by Juan Daniel Fernández Molero.
Leslie Thornton is an American avant-garde filmmaker and artist.
Voulez-vous coucher avec God? is a 1972 Canadian experimental film directed by Jack Christie and Michael Hirsh. Combining live-action and animation, the film is heavily steeped in late 1960s - early 1970s counterculture and features of a soundtrack of popular music from the period. It tells the story of a bigoted and war-crazed God, portrayed by Tuli Kupferberg, who sends an angel down to Earth to become President of the United States, leading to chaos.
Finding Sofía is a 2016 comedy film written and directed by Nico Casavecchia. The film is Casavecchia's first feature film and was produced by 1stAveMachine. It premiered in 2016 on the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema and was included in the festival's Argentine official competition. The picture features Sam Huntington, Andrea Carballo, Rafael Spregelburd, and Sofía Brihet.
Susana de Sousa Dias is a Portuguese independent filmmaker.
Dhogs is an independent Galician film in the Galician language directed by Andrés Goteira, which was released in 2017. This was the director's debut film, and starred Carlos Blanco Vila, Antonio Durán "Morris", Miguel de Lira, Melania Cruz, Iván Marcos and María Costas. It premiered at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (BAFICI) on April 19, 2017, and was nominated for the Best Feature Film in the Avant-Garde and Genre section. This is the first film shot in Galicia to premiere at the Sitges Film Festival, on October 9, 2017. In Galicia, the premiere took place at the Ourense International Film Festival on October 21, 2017.
Narcisa Hirsch was an Argentine experimental filmmaker of German birth. Her work centered on themes of the body, love, sex, death, movement and the female gaze. Despite this focus on women, she resisted being labeled as a feminist.
Gypsy Davy is a 2011 documentary film, directed by Rachel Leah Jones, and co-produced by Jones and Philippe Ballaiche.
Maha Al-Saati is a Saudi Arabian female filmmaker, university assistant professor and graduate of Simon Fraser University who has taught both in Vancouver, Canada and Saudi Arabia. Her academic research covers the representation of architectural spaces, education through the use of film, and the influence of religion and culture on media. She is also an alum of the TIFF filmmaker lab 2020, TIFF Writers Studio 2021, and recipient of the TIFF Share Her Journey award 2020. She is of mixed Arab and Uzbek heritage.
Leonardo Pirondi is a Brazilian film director from São Paulo. Pirondi's work explores the intersection between fiction and non-fiction filmmaking using non-conventional structures of documentary, experimental, and narrative modes. In his films he explores contemporary sociopolitical issues and collective anxieties as a lens to look into history, imagination, myth, and technology.
