The British Avant-Garde Film, 1926-1995
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IVERS TON PREl Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/britishavantgardOOOOunse 1 926 TO 199 1926 TO 199 AN ANTHOLOGY OF WRITINGS EDITED BY MICHAEL O’PRAY UNIVERSITY lEi LUTON PRESS THE ARTS COUNCIL OF ENGLAND British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this page is available from the British Library ISBN: 1 86020 004 4 Published by John Libbey Media Faculty of Humanities University of Luton 75 Castle Street, Luton, Bedfordshire LU1 3AJ England ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Will Bell at the Arts Council of England for not only his unstinting support but also for his patience and good humour in the face of a deadline-breaking editor. I’d also like to thank David Curtis for his support and his archives, Peter Gidal for his unfailing encouragement, and Nicky Hamlyn for talking through some of the issues with me. I’d also like to thank David Robinson for his permission to use Lindsay Anderson’s essay on Jennings. Thanks also to Roma Gibson at the British Film Institute, Julia Knight and Professor Maggie Humm. As always I’m grateful to Judith Preece, Nikki Bainsfair and Jak Measure at the School of Art and Design Library, University of East London for their friendly assistance and hospitality. I’d also like to thank Gabrielle Dolan and Phil Davies for their friendship during the stitching together of the book, and Phil especially for his computer karma. My thanks to my colleague Gillian Elinor and her husband Jonathan for the generous use of their Welsh retreat. Most importantly, for my interest in and knowledge of British avant-garde film I must acknowledge a debt to AL Rees, Simon Field, Ian Christie, Malcolm Le Grice, Ray Durgnat, Tony Rayns, William Raban, Marilyn Halford, Jayne Parker, Chris Welsby, Archie Tait, Jayne Pilling, Paul Taylor, Tim Highsted, Michael Maziere, Moira Sweeney, Cordelia Swann and all the other British film-makers, writers, programmers and fanatics too innumerable to mention who I’ve had the pleasure and privilege to know over the years. Of course, I must thank all the authors, notably the living, for their cooperation. I’d like to thank the University of East London for sabbatical leave which made the editing of this book possible. Finally I’d like to thank Sarah for her love. Michael O’Pray London, March 1996 © 1996 The Arts Council of England/John Libbey Media/University of Luton Unauthorised duplication contravenes applicable laws. Book designed by Design & Art, London Printed in Hong Kong by Dah Hua Printing Press Co Ltd Contents INTRODUCTION 1 Michael O’Pray 1920s AND 1930s THE CINEMA 33 Virginia Woolf THE PRINCIPLES OF THE FILM 37 Robert Fairthorne ON BORDERLINE 45 Roland Cosandey THE AVANT-GARDE ATTITUDE IN THE THIRTIES 65 Deke Dusinberre INTERREGNUM ONLY CONNECT: SOME ASPECTS OF THE WORK OF HUMPHREY JENNINGS 87 Lindsay Anderson 1960s AND 1970s ENGLISH AVANT-GARDE FILM: AN EARLY CHRONOLOGY 101 David Curtis FILM IS 121 Steve Dwoskin THE TWO AVANT-GARDES 133 Peter Wollen THEORY AND DEFINITION OF STRUCTURALIST/ MATERIALIST FILM 145 Peter Gidal REPETITION TIME: NOTES AROUND ‘STRUCTURALIST/MATERIALIST FILM’ 171 Stephen Heath The History we need 181 Malcolm Le Grice WHOSE HISTORY? 193 Lis Rhodes FILM FEMINISM AND THE AVANT-GARDE 199 Laura Mulvey 1980s AND 1990s STRUCTURALIST TRACES 219 Nicky Hamlyn THE LAST NEW WAVE: MODERNISM IN THE BRITISH FILMS OF THE THATCHER ERA 239 Peter Wollen AESTHETICS AND POLITICS: WORKING ON TWO FRONTS 261 Martine Attille, Reece Auguiste, Peter Gidal and Isaac Julien THE POETRY OF FACT 275 Catherine Lacey INCURSIONS AND INCLUSIONS: 285 THE AVANT-GARDE ON CHANNEL FOUR 1 98B-93 Rod Stoneman WILL THE MONSTER EAT THE FILM? OR THE REDEFINITION OF BRITISH ANIMATION 1980-1994 299 Simon Pummell SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 316 CONTRIBUTORS NOTES 322 INDEX 325 VI Preface In his introduction to the third ICA biennial of Independent Film and Video John Wyver contended that ‘In the mid-1990s in Britain there is no independent film and video culture. None - at least of the kind so clearly identifiable 15 years ago, and none with any significant presence. No independent film avant-garde, no independent video art production’.' Attendant to that controversial statement is our concern that critical writing in this area is now all but non-existent. It is our contention that with its antecedent gone to ground it is not surprising that there is a paucity of contemporary writing on artists’ film and video. Of course this hiatus mirrors the diversity of production practices and the shifting cultural arenas currently occupied by film and video-makers. However, criticism that was ‘clearly identifiable 15 years ago’ - through books, journals and magazines - failed to maintain its prominence and is now lost to a new generation of film and video artists. The British Avant-Garde Film 1925 to 1995 - and its sister volume Diverse Practices (Ed. Julia Knight) - re-present that history, or rather present us with historical bricolage; critical fragments that give a sense of the concerns of the sectors. Our hope is that these two books - together with A Directory of British Film and Video Artists (Ed. David Curtis) - will highlight the rich practice of artists and independent production while outlining a history of critical thought that will help establish the foundations for new writing and comment. This is the sixth volume in a series of books on the way the media has transformed our understanding of the arts. The first volume, Picture This: media representations of visual art and artists (Ed. Philip Hayward), deals with a range of topics, including the representation of visual art in popular cinema, and how broadcast television has VII revolutionised our relationship to culture and cultural practices. The second volume, Culture, Technology and Creativity in the Late Twentieth Century (Ed. Philip Hayward), addresses various aspects of how technology and culture inter-relate. Topics covered include digital technologies, computers and cyberspace. Volume three Parallel Lines: media representations of dance (Ed. Stephanie Jordan and Dave Allen) collects together accounts of how dance and dancing have been represented on public television in Britain. The book considers the role of dance in a variety of television practices including pop-videos, popular dance programmes, and experimental and contemporary dance. Volume four Arts TV: A history of arts television in Britain is the first general, systematic history of the various types or genres of arts programmes - review programmes, strand series, drama documentaries, artists profiles, etc. - and gives a chronological account of their evolution from 1936 to the 1990s. Volume five, A Night in at the Opera: media representations of opera (Ed. Jeremy Tambling), offers an arresting range of accounts of how the popular arts have represented this high art form written by specialists in music, media and popular culture. It raises issues which have bearings on the sociology of music and about its implications for television and video culture. Volume six Diverse Practices (Ed. Julia Knight) continues the interrogation of the creative use of film, video and broadcasting. Further planned volumes include a book on music and the media, volumes on drama and adapting the novel and a further volume on new technologies. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Michael O’Pray for editing this book and the publishers John Libbey Media at the University of Luton who joined us in its production. We are grateful to them for the untiring and thoughtful way in which they have approached the task. Finally, the views expressed herein are those of the authors and should not be taken as a statement of Arts Council of England policy. Will Bell Education Officer: Film, Video & Broadcasting July 1996 1. John Wyver, What you see Is What you Get, London, ICA, 1995 VIII MICHAEL O’PRAY Introduction DEFINITIONS The cinema industry’s ability to tell stories through moving images has meant that many aspects of our lives - politics, sex, religion, class, war, morality, fashion, death, birth and passion - have found their mesmeric projections on the ‘silver screen’. But not all. The industrial ‘dream machine’ has never allowed ‘unacceptable’ subject-matter or ‘innovative’ form to jeopardise its prime concern - making money. But then its control has never been total. Since its beginnings, film has been used by artists, documentarists, scientists, advertisers, educators, politicians, pornographers and, before the arrival of video, by those wishing simply to preserve their own lives on film in ‘home-movies’. These by-ways of cinema remain largely unexplored. But artist’s film which comprise the major part of avant-garde cinema, wherever it is found - in America, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Italy, Holland, Poland - has often found its inspiration, its forms, its sensibility in these marginal practices. The animators Len Lye and Norman McLaren made work in the format of advertising; Jean Painleve in France in the 1920s and 1930s made scientific film studies, famously of the sea-horse (L’hippocampe (1934]); Cavalcanti’s classic innovative study of British coalmining Coalface (1935) was a documentary; Warhol’s Couch (1964) enlists pornography to the cause of a fine art aesthetic and many of Derek Jarman’s Super 8 films of the 1970s were ‘home-movies’. At its best then, avant-garde film has been a fluid, eclectic and irreverent concern. Unlike commercial cinema, the avant-garde does not have a stable mode of production, distribution O’PR AY/INTRODUCTION 1 or exhibition. It has been produced by the individual, by crews and by mechanical contraptions. It has been shown in galleries, backrooms, nightclubs, churches, discos and so on. It has been distributed by commercial companies, co-operatives, individuals and often not at all.