Experimental Filmmaking

This module expands on the introduction to experimental filmmaking in FLM020N227S ‘Alternative Film Cultures’ at Level 5 by offering a detailed, wide-ranging exploration of a selection of key figures, movements, events, practices and films in the field of experimental filmmaking around the globe, with a particular focus on contemporary practitioners and developments. Drawing on examples from different national contexts, it combines the study and analysis of the creative, formal and stylistic dimensions of experimental filmmaking and artists’ moving image work with a focus upon the cultural processes and institutions that sustain them and establish for them tactical spaces within a broader continuum of moving image production. It also relates contemporary experimental filmmaking to antecedent avant-garde practices, and to a range of historical and recent theoretical writings. As such, it builds on ‘Alternative Film Cultures’ by continuing to encourage students to adopt an open-minded, historically-informed approach to discovering and comprehending the exciting diversity of experimental global film culture, while developing specialism in this area and facilitating their own creative experiments in audiovisual form informed by contemporary examples.