Jonas Mekas was a Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, and artist who has been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema". Mekas' work has been exhibited in museums and at festivals worldwide. Mekas was active in New York City, where he co-founded Anthology Film Archives, The Film-Makers' Cooperative, and the journal Film Culture. He was also the first film critic for The Village Voice.
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.
Lawrence Jordan is an American independent filmmaker who is most widely known for his animated collage films. He was a founding member of the Canyon Cinema Cooperative and the Camera Obscura Film Society.
Bruce Baillie was an American experimental filmmaker.
The National Center for Jewish Film is a non-profit motion picture archive, distributor, and resource center. It houses the largest collection of Jewish-themed film and video outside of Israel. Its mission is to collect, restore, preserve, catalogue, and exhibit films with artistic and educational value relevant to the Jewish experience, and to disseminate these materials to the widest possible audience.
The Winnipeg Film Group (WFG) is an artist-run film education, production, distribution, and exhibition centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, committed to promoting the art of Canadian cinema, especially independent cinema.
Sidney Peterson was an American writer, artist, and avant-garde filmmaker. He attended UC Berkeley, worked as a newspaper reporter in Monterey, and spent time as a practicing painter and sculptor in France in the 1920s and 1930s. After World War II, Peterson founded Workshop 20 at the California School of Fine Arts, initiating filmmaking courses at the school.
Nathaniel Dorsky is an American experimental filmmaker and film editor. His film career began during the New American Cinema movement of the 1960s, when he met his partner Jerome Hiler. He won an Emmy Award in 1967 for his work on the film Gaugin in Tahiti: Search for Paradise.
Peggy Ahwesh is an American experimental filmmaker and video artist. She received her B.F.A. at Antioch College. A bricoleur who has created both narrative works and documentaries, some projects are scripted and others incorporate improvised performance. She makes use of sync sound, found footage, digital animation, and Pixelvision video. Her work is primarily an investigation of cultural identity and the role of the subject in various genres. Her interests include genre; women, sexuality and feminism; reenactment; and artists' books. Her works have been shown worldwide, including in San Francisco, New York, Barcelona, London, Toronto, Rotterdam, and Créteil, France. Starting in 1990, she has taught at Bard College as a Professor of Film and Electronic Arts. Her teaching interests include: experimental media, history of the non-fiction film, and women in film.
San Francisco Cinematheque is a San Francisco-based film society for artist-made cinema. It was created in 1961 by a group of filmmakers, including Bruce Baillie and Chick Strand. This screening program grew into Canyon Cinema before being split off into a sister organization, originally named the Foundation for Art in Cinema, during the 1970s.
Luther Price (pseudonym) was an experimental filmmaker and visual artist.
The Cinematheque, founded in 1972, is a Canadian charity and non-profit film institute, media education centre, and film exhibitor based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
TIFF Cinematheque is a year-round programme of the Toronto International Film Festival devoted to the presentation, understanding and appreciation of Canadian and international cinema through carefully curated programming. It features acclaimed director's retrospectives, national and regional spotlights, experimental and avant-garde cinema, exclusive engagements of classic films, including many new and rare archival prints. It was established in 1990 after TIFF assumed management of the Ontario Film Institute from Gerald Pratley, creating Cinematheque for the OFI's film screening program while moving the OFI's reference library to the new Film Reference Library.
The Film-Makers' Cooperative is an artist-run, non-profit organization founded in 1961 in New York City by Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, Shirley Clarke, Stan Brakhage, Jack Smith, Lionel Rogosin, Gregory Markopoulos, Lloyd Michael Williams, and other filmmakers, for the distribution, education, and exhibition of avant-garde films and alternative media.
Invisible Adversaries is a 1977 Austrian experimental drama film directed by Valie Export, her debut feature film.
Sara Kathryn Arledge was an American artist and filmmaker acknowledged as "one of the foremothers of the American experimental cinema."
Schmeerguntz is a 1965 American avant-garde film by Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley. It is a collage film that contrasts messy depictions of domestic life with the pristine images of women found in media and advertising. The film was an inspiration for the Miss America protest that happened in 1968.
All My Life is a 1966 American experimental short film directed by Bruce Baillie. It shows a continuous shot of a fence, soundtracked by Ella Fitzgerald's 1936 debut single "All My Life". Film critic P. Adams Sitney identified it as an early example of what he termed structural film.
Anticipation of the Night is a 1958 American avant-garde film directed by Stan Brakhage. It was a breakthrough in the development of the lyrical style Brakhage used in his later films.
Triste is a 1996 American avant-garde short film directed by Nathaniel Dorsky. It is the first in a set of "Four Cinematic Songs", which also includes Variations, Arbor Vitae, and Love's Refrain.
