Experiments in Film & Media

Catalog description

This class is a critical examination of experimental film and video with and emphasis on makers in New York City. There are no criteria for an avant-garde film or video, only the expectation that by watching it a viewer will be introduced to a challenging, refreshingly unfamiliar language that, by the end of the piece, he or she will have begun to speak. This new language many be politically confrontational, aesthetically difficult, lyrical, or rhythmical, but no matter what the form, it will express the particular vision of the artist who produced it. Challenging as this work may be for any audience, a close viewing of these "avant-garde" pieces will expand on your appreciation of their poetry and complexity. Whether you call these films experimental, alternative, independent, personal or poetic, they share very little save for their adventurous desire to reawaken those dormant visual and aural sensibilities that may have been hypnotized into years of sleep by too much commercial, mainstream media. This course allocates as History & Criticism for Film & TV majors.