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.
Very Nice, Very Nice is a Canadian avant-garde collage film made by Arthur Lipsett in 1961, and produced by the National Film Board of Canada.
Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema. The film archive and theater is located at 32 Second Avenue on the southeast corner of East 2nd Street, in a New York City historic district in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan.
The Denver Underground Film Festival (DUFF) premiered November 21–23, 1997 at The Bug Theater in Denver, Colorado. Since then the visions of hundreds of independent filmmakers from around the world have been showcased, including films by classic experimental and avant-garde filmmakers like Stan Brakhage, Luis Buñuel, Fassbinder, and Man Ray.
Wavelength is a 1967 Canadian-American short subject by experimental filmmaker and artist Michael Snow. Considered a landmark of avant-garde cinema, it was filmed over one week in December 1966 and edited in 1967, and is an example of what film theorist P. Adams Sitney describes as "structural film", calling Snow "the dean of structural filmmakers."
P. Adams Sitney, is a historian of American avant-garde cinema. He is known as the author of Visionary Film, one of the first books on the history of experimental film in the United States.
Marie Menken was an American experimental filmmaker, painter, and socialite. She was noted for her unique filming style that incorporated collage. She was one of the first New York filmmakers to use a hand-held camera and trained Andy Warhol on its use. Her film Glimpse of the Garden was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Peter Kubelka is an Austrian filmmaker, architect, musician, curator and lecturer. His films, few in number, are known to be carefully edited and extremely brief. He is known for his 1966 Unsere Afrikareise, and for other very short and intricately-edited films.
Philip Stewart Solomon was an American experimental filmmaker noted for his work with both film and video. In recent years, Solomon had earned acclaim for a series of films that incorporate machinima made using games from the Grand Theft Auto series. His films are often described as haunting and lyrical.
Thigh Line Lyre Triangular is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage, released in 1961, which depicts the birth of the director's third child, a daughter named Neowyn. The film, which involves painting and hand-scratching over photographic images, is more abstract than the director's earlier Window Water Baby Moving, which documented the birth of Brakhage's first-born, Myrrenna.
Cat's Cradle is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage, produced in 1959. The film was described by Brakhage as "sexual witchcraft involving two couples and a 'medium' cat."
Arnulf Rainer is a 1960 Austrian experimental short film by Peter Kubelka, and one of the earliest flicker films. The film alternates between light or the absence of light and sound or the absence of sound. Since its May 1960 premiere in Vienna, Arnulf Rainer has become known as a fundamental work for structural film. Kubelka released a "negative" version, titled Antiphon, in 2012.
The Austrian Film Museum is a film archive and museum located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Peter Konlechner and Peter Kubelka in 1964 as a non-profit organization.
Venom and Eternity is a 1951 French avant-garde film by Isidore Isou that grew out of the Lettrist movement in Paris. It created a scandal at the 1951 Cannes Film Festival.
Schwechater is a 1958 experimental short film by Austrian filmmaker Peter Kubelka. It is the second entry in his trilogy of metrical films, between Adebar and Arnulf Rainer.
The End is a 1953 American short film directed by Christopher Maclaine. It tells the stories of six people on the last day of their lives. It premiered at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as part of Frank Stauffacher's Art in Cinema series. Though the film met audience disapproval at its premiere, it was praised by critics as a "masterpiece" and "a great work of art".
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.
Adebar is a 1957 Austrian avant-garde short film directed by Peter Kubelka. It is the first entry in Kubelka's trilogy of metrical films, followed by Schwechater and Arnulf Rainer. Adebar is the first film to be edited entirely according to a mathematical rhythmic strategy.
