DOCSLIB.ORG

Not Art: an Action History of British Underground Cinema

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Not Art: an Action History of British Underground Cinema University of Plymouth PEARL https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk 04 University of Plymouth Research Theses 01 Research Theses Main Collection 2003 Not Art: An Action History of British Underground Cinema Reekie, Duncan http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/1273 University of Plymouth All content in PEARL is protected by copyright law. Author manuscripts are made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the details provided on the item record or document. In the absence of an open licence (e.g. Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher or author. NOT ART: AN ACTION HISTORY OF BRITISH UNDERGROUND CINEMA by DuRan Reekie A thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth in partial fulfilment for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Falmouth College of Arts August 2003 THESIS CONTAINS CD This copy of the thesis has been supplied on the condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that no quotation from the thesis and no injormntion derived from it mny be published without the author's prior consent. Abstract NOT ART: AN ACTION IDSTORY OF BRITISH UNDERGROUND CINEMA My thesis is both an oppositional history and a (re)definition of British Underground Cinema culture (1959 - 2(02). The historical significance of Underground Cinema has long been ideologically entangled in a mesh of academic typologies and ultra leftist rhetoric, abducting it from those directly involved. The intention of my work is to return definition to the 'object' of study, to write from within. This process involves viewing the history of modem British culture not as a vague monolithic and hierarchic spectrum but rather as a distinct historical conflict between the repressive legitimate Art culture of the bourgeoisie and the radical illegitimate popular culture of the working class. In this context, Underground Cinema can be {re)defined as a radical hybrid culture which fused elements of popular culture, Counterculture and Anti-Art. However, the first wave of Underground Cinema was effectively suppressed by the irrational ideology of its key activists and the hegemonic power of the Art tradition. They disowned the radical popular and initiated an Avant-Garde/Independent cinema project which developed an official State administrated bourgeois alternative to popular cinema. My conclusion is that Underground Cinema still has the potential to become a radical and commercial popular culture but that this is now frustrated by an institutionalised State Art culture which has colonised the State funding agencies, higher education and the academic study of cinema. If the Underground is to flourish it must refuse and subvert this Art culture and renew its alliance with radical, experimental and commercial pop culture. My methodology is an holistic interactive praxis which combines research, writing, film/video making, digital design, performance and political activism. My final submission will be an open and heterodox mesh of polemic, history and entertainment. Its key components will be a written thesis which will locate this praxis within its intellectual context and a web site which will integrate my research and practice 1997-2003. 3 Phd Thesis: Not Art : An Action History of British Underground Cinema CONTENTS Abstract 3 Introduction 8 Section A· Art /NolAn 24 Chapter 1 : An Historical Outline of the illegitimate Popular Tradition: Continuity and Resistance. 25 Chapter 2 : The History of Art, the Function of the Avant-Garde and the Rise of Modernism. 54 Chapter 3 : Folklore vs. Kitsch: How Art Theorised Against the Popular. 68 Section B: Cinema at the Heart of the Pop /Art Conflict. 81 Chapter 4 : Montage Culture: Cinema as the Popular Function of Film. 82 ChapterS: The First Avant-Garde Film Movement: the Vengeance of Art. 109 Chapter 6 : British Independent Film 1925 -1966: the Rise of the State Alternative to Popular Cinema. 117 Chapter 7: Amateur Cine Culture: the Hidden Continuity From 1930s Experimental Film to 1%Os Underground Cinema. 147 SedioaC-= Ihe.Searcb For the Cool Place: Underground Cinema v5..-Avant_GankEiJ.nL 166 Chapter 8: Anti-Art, Pop and Bohemia: the Bohemian Cabaret as Precursor to the Underground Cinema. 167 Chapter 9: The Origins of the U.S. Underground in the Cultural Hybrid of Popular Culture, Anti-Art and the Counterculture. 187 Chapter 10: The L.F.M.C. and the First British Underground Cinema 1966-70. 204 Chapter 11 : Radical Theory and its Practice: A Demystification . 221 4 Chapter 12 : The Constitution of the Independent Sector: a Trinity of Texts: Curtis, Gidal and Wollen. 234 Chapter 13 : A Brief Historical Overview of the Underground Cinema Resurgence: From the New York Cinema of Transgression to the New London Underground 1991-2003. 262 Resolution A Poetics for the Subversive Elements of Pop: Strategies for the New Underground 279 Bibliography 287 5 Acknowledgements Thanks first to my partner and colleague Colette Rouhier for all her help, support and patience over six years of research, writing and editing. Thanks to Falmouth College of Arts for the Research Studentship which funded the first three years of my work. Thanks to my Director of Studies Professor Penny Florence for her insight, enthusiasm and tolerance. And to my second supervisor Professor Colin Beardon for his encouragement and analysis, and to Dr Amy Sargeant for her initial guidance. Thanks to Dionne Jones, Research Administrator at the Falmouth College of Arts Research Support Unit for her diligence and encouragement. Thanks to Mary Anson, Stefan Szczelkun and Paul Tarrago for advice and criticism on earlier drafts of this text. Thanks to all my colleagues at Falmouth College of Arts for their enthusiastic debate and advice especially Dr Ryya Bread, Dr Angeline Morrison and Mr Barry Cooper. Thanks to all the Independent filmmakers, activists and administrators who discussed their work with me, crucially David Curtis, Simon Field, Paul O'Connor and John Wyver. Thanks to all my comrades in the London Underground Cinema movement for their enthusiasm and integrity, including the Exploding Cinema Collective, James Stevens, Steven Eastwood, Ian White and all the makers involved in the Maldoror project. And finally thanks to all my friends and family for all their love, support and forbearance especially my Mum and Dad, Jon Storey and Melinda Styles. 6 AUIHOR'£DECI,ARATION At no time during the registration for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy has the author been registered for any other University award. This study has financed with the aid of a studentship from the Falmouth College of Arts Research Department. Relevant film screenings, festivals, conferences and seminars were attended and external institutions were visited for consultation purposes. Papers presented at the Independent Art School Conference at Hull Time Based Arts, Hull, Oct. 2000 and at Experimental Film Today at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston July 2003. Other conferences/ events attended include Rethinking the Avant-Garde, Phoenix Arts, Leicester, Oct.1998, The State of Independence at the Lux Centre, London, Nov. 1998, the 8th New York Underground Film Festival at Anthology Film Archives, New York, 2001, the Artists' Moving Image Review Seminar at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, 30th April 2002, Shoot Shoot Shoot: the First Decade of the London Film-Milkers' Co-operative and the British Avant-Garde Film 1966- 76 at the Tate Modern, London May 2002, and the AHRB British Artists' Film and Video Study Collection Study Day at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, 13th December 2002. I have also been a key organiser of a series of Underground Cinema events including monthly Exploding Cinema screenings in London 1997-2003, the VOLCANO Underground Film and Video Festival October 1997, November 1998 and 1999, the Global Attic Film and Video Festival held simultaneously in London, Brussels and Rotterdam, 20th June 1998 and two Purple Circle Cinema Club screenings in Falmouth, Cornwall 2002. My film/ video work has been widely screened including: Shark Lust (Super / 16mm 1999) a component of the international Underground feature film MALDOROR which has been widely screened throughout Europe and America including the 8th New York Underground Film Festival 2001 and the the 8th Chicago Underground Film Festival 2001. Son of Oedipus (Super 8 2001) Screened at the Exploding Cinema London, the Purple Circle Cinema Oub, Falmouth, Cornwall, and the 2002 Cinematexas Festival, Texas. Signed Date 7 Introduction Methodology This thesis is both an oppositional history and a {re)definition of the British Underground Cinema culture which was initiated in the late 1950s and which had an unprecedented resurgence in the early 199Os. The significance of the Underground for experimental film culture has long been entangled in a mesh of irrational academic typologies and pseudo Leftist rhetoric. My purpose is to strip away this mesh and so enable the contemporary participants of the culture to take effective action against anti-democratic, authoritarian and elitist tendencies within the wider culture of experimental film/video. In opposition to Avant-Garde histories of experimental film and video, I shall {re)define Underground Cinema not as a historical phase or a medium specific aesthetic, but as an anarchic hybrid subculture which combines elements of experimental film and video, amateurism, Bohemianism and Anti-Art.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Why Call Them "Cult Movies"? American Independent Filmmaking and the Counterculture in the 1960S Mark Shiel, University of Leicester, UK
    Why Call them "Cult Movies"? American Independent Filmmaking and the Counterculture in the 1960s Mark Shiel, University of Leicester, UK Preface In response to the recent increased prominence of studies of "cult movies" in academic circles, this essay aims to question the critical usefulness of that term, indeed the very notion of "cult" as a way of talking about cultural practice in general. My intention is to inject a note of caution into that current discourse in Film Studies which valorizes and celebrates "cult movies" in particular, and "cult" in general, by arguing that "cult" is a negative symptom of, rather than a positive response to, the social, cultural, and cinematic conditions in which we live today. The essay consists of two parts: firstly, a general critique of recent "cult movies" criticism; and, secondly, a specific critique of the term "cult movies" as it is sometimes applied to 1960s American independent biker movies -- particularly films by Roger Corman such as The Wild Angels (1966) and The Trip (1967), by Richard Rush such as Hell's Angels on Wheels (1967), The Savage Seven, and Psych-Out (both 1968), and, most famously, Easy Rider (1969) directed by Dennis Hopper. Of course, no-one would want to suggest that it is not acceptable to be a "fan" of movies which have attracted the label "cult". But this essay begins from a position which assumes that the business of Film Studies should be to view films of all types as profoundly and positively "political", in the sense in which Fredric Jameson uses that adjective in his argument that all culture and every cultural object is most fruitfully and meaningfully understood as an articulation of the "political unconscious" of the social and historical context in which it originates, an understanding achieved through "the unmasking of cultural artifacts as socially symbolic acts" (Jameson, 1989: 20).
    [Show full text]
  • Georges Bataille's Philosophy of Transgression and the Cinema Of
    Is Mark of the Devil an Example of Transgressive Cinema? Georges Bataille’s Philosophy of Transgression and the Cinema of the 1970s Marcus Stiglegger translated by Laura Melchior Abstract collective moment of fear, and raises the Witchploitation films of the late 1960s – like question of whether or not this could generate a Mark of the Devil (1970) – were often criticised ‘transgressive cinema’. And in particular it asks: for exploiting inquisitorial violence such as are witchploitation films transgressive? torture and rape for the sake of pure sensation. While the exploitative manner of dealing with Keywords: witchploitation, censorship, historically based violence is clearly an issue, at sensation, transgression, taboo, philosophy, the same time the question of what effect these Georges Bataille, exploitation film, violence, depictions of extreme violence might have on torture. the audience should be raised. Every culture has its own defined and accepted limits, which are made by collective agreement. Reaching and transgressing these limits amounts to the transgression of an interdiction, of a taboo. This article discusses the representations in the media of the act of transgression – commonly associated with the work of the French philosopher and novelist Georges Bataille – as a 21 The witchploitation films which followed the useful to delineate a theoretical key to success of Michael Reeves’s Witchfinder understanding this phenomenon. After General (1968) were often criticised for explaining the notion of transgression according exploiting inquisitorial violence such as torture to Georges Bataille, I will contextualise the and rape for the sake of pure sensation. In witchploitation films by analysing several Germany Mark of the Devil (Hexen bis aufs Blut movies relating to this concept and finally gequält, Michael Armstrong, 1970) was banned comment on the transgressive nature of till 2016, and in England this film was a well- Witchfinder General and Mark of the Devil.
    [Show full text]
  • Frameworks for the Downtown Arts Scene
    ACADEMIC REGISTRAR ROOM 261 DIVERSITY OF LONDON 3Ei’ ATE HOUSE v'Al i STREET LONDON WC1E7HU Strategy in Context: The Work and Practice of New York’s Downtown Artists in the Late 1970s and Early 1980s By Sharon Patricia Harper Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of the History of Art at University College London 2003 1 UMI Number: U602573 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U602573 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract The rise of neo-conservatism defined the critical context of many appraisals of artistic work produced in downtown New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although initial reviews of the scene were largely enthusiastic, subsequent assessments of artistic work from this period have been largely negative. Artists like Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf have been assessed primarily in terms of gentrification, commodification, and political commitment relying upon various theoretical assumptions about social processes. The conclusions reached have primarily centred upon the lack of resistance by these artists to post­ industrial capitalism in its various manifestations.
    [Show full text]
  • Download the Monthly Film & Event Calendar
    THU SAT WED 1:30 Film 1 10 21 3:10 to Yuma. T2 Events & Programs Film & Event Calendar 1:30 Film 10:20 Family Film FRI Gallery Sessions The Armory Party 2018 Beloved Enemy. T2 Tours for Fours. Irresistible Forces, Daily, 11:30 a.m. & 1:30 p.m. Wed, Mar 7, 9:00 p.m.–12:30 a.m. Education & Immovable 30 5:30 Film Museum galleries VIP Access at 8:00 p.m. Research Building Objects: The Films Film Janitzio. T2 of Amir Naderi. New Directors/ Join us for conversations and Celebrate the opening of The 10:20 Family 7:00 Film See moma.org/film New Films 2018. activities that offer insightful and Armory Show and Armory Arts A Closer Look for El Mar La Mar. T1 4:30 Film 1:30 Film 6:05 Event for details. See newdirectors.org unusual ways to engage with art. Week with The Armory Party SUN WED Kids. Education & FRI SAT MON Pueblerina. T2 Music by Luciano VW Sunday Sessions: for details. at MoMA—a benefit event with 7:30 Film Research Building 1:30 Film Limited to 25 participants 4 7 16 Berio and Bruno Hair Wars. MoMA PS1 24 26 live music and DJs, featuring María Calendaria. T2 7:30 Film Kings Go Forth. T2 10:20 Family 7:30 Event 2:00 Film Film Maderna. T1 Film Film platinum-selling artist BØRNS. Flor silvestre. T1 6:30 Film Art Lab: Nature Tours for Fours. Quiet Mornings. Victims of Sin. T2 Irresistible Forces, 4:30 Film Irresistible Forces, Irresistible Forces, 6:30 Film Music by Pink Floyd, Daily.
    [Show full text]
  • YOU KILLED ME FIRST the Cinema of Transgression Press Release
    YOU KILLED ME FIRST The Cinema of Transgression Press Release February 19 – April 9, 2012 Opening: Saturday, February 18, 2012, 5–10 pm Press Preview: Friday, February 17, 2012, 11 am Karen Finley, Tessa Hughes-Freeland, Richard Kern, Lung Leg, Lydia Lunch, Kembra Pfahler, Casandra Stark, Tommy Turner, David Wojnarowicz, Nick Zedd “Basically, in one sentence, give us the definition of the ‚Cinema of Transgression’.” Nick Zedd: “Fuck you.” In the 1980s a group of filmmakers emerged from the Lower East Side, New York, whose shared aims Nick Zedd later postulated in the Cinema of Transgression manifesto: „We propose … that any film which doesn’t shock isn’t worth looking at. … We propose to go beyond all limits set or prescribed by taste, morality or any other traditional value system shackling the minds of men. … There will be blood, shame, pain and ecstasy, the likes of which no one has yet imagined.“ While the Reagan government mainly focused on counteracting the decline of traditional family values, the filmmakers went on a collision course with the conventions of American society by dealing with life in the Lower East Side defined by criminality, brutality, drugs, AIDS, sex, and excess. Nightmarish scenarios of violence, dramatic states of mind, and perverse sexual abysses – sometimes shot with stolen camera equipment, the low budget films, which were consciously aimed at shock, provocation, and confrontation, bear witness to an extraordinary radicality. The films stridently analyze a reality of social hardship met with sociopolitical indifference. Although all the filmmakers of the Cinema of Transgression shared a belief in a radical form of moral and aesthetic transgression the films themselves emerged from an individual inner necessity; thus following a very personal visual sense and demonstratively subjective readings of various living realities.
    [Show full text]
  • Index to Volume 26 January to December 2016 Compiled by Patricia Coward
    THE INTERNATIONAL FILM MAGAZINE Index to Volume 26 January to December 2016 Compiled by Patricia Coward How to use this Index The first number after a title refers to the issue month, and the second and subsequent numbers are the page references. Eg: 8:9, 32 (August, page 9 and page 32). THIS IS A SUPPLEMENT TO SIGHT & SOUND Index 2016_4.indd 1 14/12/2016 17:41 SUBJECT INDEX SUBJECT INDEX After the Storm (2016) 7:25 (magazine) 9:102 7:43; 10:47; 11:41 Orlando 6:112 effect on technological Film review titles are also Agace, Mel 1:15 American Film Institute (AFI) 3:53 Apologies 2:54 Ran 4:7; 6:94-5; 9:111 changes 8:38-43 included and are indicated by age and cinema American Friend, The 8:12 Appropriate Behaviour 1:55 Jacques Rivette 3:38, 39; 4:5, failure to cater for and represent (r) after the reference; growth in older viewers and American Gangster 11:31, 32 Aquarius (2016) 6:7; 7:18, Céline and Julie Go Boating diversity of in 2015 1:55 (b) after reference indicates their preferences 1:16 American Gigolo 4:104 20, 23; 10:13 1:103; 4:8, 56, 57; 5:52, missing older viewers, growth of and A a book review Agostini, Philippe 11:49 American Graffiti 7:53; 11:39 Arabian Nights triptych (2015) films of 1970s 3:94-5, Paris their preferences 1:16 Aguilar, Claire 2:16; 7:7 American Honey 6:7; 7:5, 18; 1:46, 49, 53, 54, 57; 3:5: nous appartient 4:56-7 viewing films in isolation, A Aguirre, Wrath of God 3:9 10:13, 23; 11:66(r) 5:70(r), 71(r); 6:58(r) Eric Rohmer 3:38, 39, 40, pleasure of 4:12; 6:111 Aaaaaaaah! 1:49, 53, 111 Agutter, Jenny 3:7 background
    [Show full text]
  • Pacific Film Archive
    Lee Amazonas • GUERRILLA CINEMATHEQUE COMES OF AGE: THE PACIFICE FILM ARCHIVE GUERRILLA CINEMATHEQUE COMES OF AGE THE PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE Lee Amazonas This whole thing is put together with spit, chewing gum, good intentions, coop- eration from the film community and overhead paid by the Museum. I’m not over-budget or under-budget because I haven’t got a budget. —Pacific Film Archive founder Sheldon Renan in a February 1971 interview FOR AN INSTITUTION WITH SUCH A JERRY-BUILT INCEPTION, the Pacific Film Archive (PFA) has not done too badly for itself as it progresses through its fourth decade of exist- ence. The numbers tell a small part of the story: a permanent collection of over 10,000 films and videos (stored in temperature- and humidity-controlled vaults); a study center whose holdings include more than 7,600 books on film history, theory, criticism, and reference, 150 international film periodical titles, over 95,000 clipping files, 36,000 film stills, and 7,500 posters; and an exhibition program of approximately 500 film presentations each year serving an audience of over 50,000 viewers from the Berkeley campus and around the Bay Area. Beyond statistics, it is the magnificent array of programs the Pacific Film Archive of- fers that provides a broader understanding of this vital institution. Many audience members and professionals throughout the film archive com- munity would agree that the exhibition program at PFA is among the most richly varied and com- prehensive shown anywhere, presenting avant- garde and experimental film, classic Hollywood, international cinema (from Iran to Finland to China to Brazil), video art, silent film, ethno- graphic film, and more.
    [Show full text]
  • Marlon Riggs
    Speaking the Self: Cinema of Transgression Flaming Creatures “At once primitive and sophisticated, hilarious and poignant, spontaneous and studied, frenzied and languid, crude and delicate, avant and nostalgic, gritty and fanciful, fresh and faded, innocent and jaded, high and low, raw and cooked, underground and camp, black and white and white on white, composed and decomposed, richly perverse and gloriously impoverished, Flaming Creatures was something new. Had Jack Smith produced nothing other than this amazing artifice, he would still rank among the great visionaries of American film.” [J. Hoberman] Jack Smith: Flaming Creatures, 1963 • Writer, performance artist, actor. Classic “downtown” underground personality. • Smith endorsed a realm of “secret flix” ranging from B-grade horror movies to Maureen O'Hara Spanish Galleon films, from Busby Berkeley musicals to Dorothy Lamour sarong movies. Singled out Universal Pictures' “Queen of Technicolor,” Maria Montez, star of exotic adventure films such as Arabian Nights (1942), Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944), and Cobra Woman (1944). • Loose tableau set to scratchy needle-drop music: “polymorphous perverse.” • Banned in New York state, 1964. Vigorous defense by Susan Sontag and others. Outsiders • David Lynch: “John Waters opened up an important space for all of us.” Pink Flamingos • Why has this work come to be celebrated? Midnight Movie shock value or esthetic/cultural importance? • What role does this film play in the lives of its actors? • Film as an esthetic experience vs. film as a liberatory social rallying cry. Compare to punk music. • How does this film address its audience? How might “specific, historical audiences” read this differently? Outsiders “The term camp—normally used as an adjective, even though earliest recorded uses employed it mainly as a verb—refers to the deliberate and sophisticated use of kitsch, mawkish or corny themes and styles in art, clothing or conversation.
    [Show full text]
  • Richard A. Sherman Pennsylvania State University 124 Carnegie
    Richard A. Sherman Pennsylvania State University 124 Carnegie Building, University Park, PA 16802 (W) 814.865.9208 (C) 814.404.9276 [email protected] EDUCATION M.F.A., Film, Ohio University 1999 B.S., Art, James Madison University 1991 ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS Associate Professor, Pennsylvania State University 2010-present Assistant Professor, Pennsylvania State University 2004-2010 Assistant Professor, Pittsburgh Filmmakers 2002-2004 Visiting Assistant Professor, Ohio University 1999-2002 Graduate Teaching Assistant, Ohio University 1997 COURSES TAUGHT (Graduate, Undergraduate) (U) Advanced Documentary Production (Abroad) (U) Introductory Film Production (U) Intermediate Documentary Production (U) Advanced Documentary Production (U) Intermediate Experimental Production (U) Advanced Experimental Production (U) Intermediate Narrative Production (U) Advanced Narrative Production (U) Intermediate Cinematography (U) Advanced Cinematography (G) 1st Year Film Production (G) 2nd Year Film Production (G) 3rd Year Thesis Film Production (G) Advanced Cinematography GRANTS AND AWARDS • Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Individual Faculty Grant, 2015-16 • Other Israel Film Fund, Film Finishing Grant, 2012 • Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Individual Faculty Grant, 2010 • Deans’ Excellence Fund, College of Communications, funding support, 2009 • Deans’ Excellence Award for Research & Creative Accomplishments, College of Communications, University Park, PA, 2006-2007 • Don Davis Program in Ethical Leadership, funding support, 2009 • Excellence in Teaching Award, Alumni Society Board, College of Communications, 2007 • President’s Future Fund, Pennsylvania State University, funding support, 2009 • Summer Research Grant, College of Communications, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 • Individual Artist Fellowship Award, Ohio Arts Council, Columbus, OH, 2003 1 • Individual Artist Fellowship Award, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, 1997 FILMOGRAPHY The Saucer That Wasn’t There (2018-19).
    [Show full text]
  • American Independent Cinema 1St Edition Pdf, Epub, Ebook
    AMERICAN INDEPENDENT CINEMA 1ST EDITION PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Geoff King | 9780253218261 | | | | | American Independent Cinema 1st edition PDF Book About this product. Hollywood was producing these three different classes of feature films by means of three different types of producers. The Suburbs. Skip to main content. Further information: Sundance Institute. In , the same year that United Artists, bought out by MGM, ceased to exist as a venue for independent filmmakers, Sterling Van Wagenen left the film festival to help found the Sundance Institute with Robert Redford. While the kinds of films produced by Poverty Row studios only grew in popularity, they would eventually become increasingly available both from major production companies and from independent producers who no longer needed to rely on a studio's ability to package and release their work. Yannis Tzioumakis. Seeing Lynch as a fellow studio convert, George Lucas , a fan of Eraserhead and now the darling of the studios, offered Lynch the opportunity to direct his next Star Wars sequel, Return of the Jedi Rick marked it as to-read Jan 05, This change would further widen the divide between commercial and non-commercial films. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Until his so-called "retirement" as a director in he continued to produce films even after this date he would produce up to seven movies a year, matching and often exceeding the five-per-year schedule that the executives at United Artists had once thought impossible. Very few of these filmmakers ever independently financed or independently released a film of their own, or ever worked on an independently financed production during the height of the generation's influence.
    [Show full text]
  • Independent Cinema in the Chinese Film Industry
    Independent cinema in the Chinese film industry Tingting Song A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Creative Industries Queensland University of Technology 2010 Abstract Chinese independent cinema has developed for more than twenty years. Two sorts of independent cinema exist in China. One is underground cinema, which is produced without official approvals and cannot be circulated in China, and the other are the films which are legally produced by small private film companies and circulated in the domestic film market. This sort of ‘within-system’ independent cinema has played a significant role in the development of Chinese cinema in terms of culture, economics and ideology. In contrast to the amount of comment on underground filmmaking in China, the significance of ‘within-system’ independent cinema has been underestimated by most scholars. This thesis is a study of how political management has determined the development of Chinese independent cinema and how Chinese independent cinema has developed during its various historical trajectories. This study takes media economics as the research approach, and its major methods utilise archive analysis and interviews. The thesis begins with a general review of the definition and business of American independent cinema. Then, after a literature review of Chinese independent cinema, it identifies significant gaps in previous studies and reviews issues of traditional definition and suggests a new definition. i After several case studies on the changes in the most famous Chinese directors’ careers, the thesis shows that state studios and private film companies are two essential domestic backers for filmmaking in China.
    [Show full text]
  • Film Outside Cinema
    FILM OUTSIDE CINEMA Catherine Rogers A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Royal College of Art for the Degree of Master of Philosophy October 2013 COPYRIGHT STATEMENT This text represents the submission for the degree of Master of Philosophy at the Royal College of Art. This copy has been supplied for the purpose of research for private study, on the understanding that it is copyright material, and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgment. 2 ABSTRACT Cinema and film are terms that have been inextricably linked since the Lumière brothers showed their first motion picture Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory in Lyon in 1895. It is difficult to conceive of one without the other. According to film theorist Jonathan Walley, the vanguards of ‘paracinema’ (such as Anthony McCall and Tony Conrad) have tried to release cinema from the medium specificity of film with works that prioritise time and light, arguing for a cinema without film. The question this project proposes is: can film exist outside cinema? This MPhil by project is led by a direct approach to creating the film image using experimental filmmaking techniques. A series of experiments will look at subject (time, motion, representational imagery) and context (location, site of the pro-filmic). The studio outcomes will lead to a critical and philosophical inquiry into theories of time, duration and movement through Henri Bergson and Mary-Ann Doane, assessing how this relates to the notion of what cinema is via André Bazin. A series of installations will demonstrate the tension between the visible and invisible by capturing motion using lensless apparatuses, against a desire to see simultaneous moments of time all at once with a material that divides and segments time.
    [Show full text]