The New American Cinema and Structural-Materialism
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| - | [[The Film-Makers' Cooperative]] aka [[New American Cinema|The New American Cinema Group]] is an artist-run, [[non-profit]] organization which was founded in 1962 in [[New York City]] by [[Jonas Mekas]], [[Shirley Clarke]], [[Stan Brakhage]], [[Gregory Markopoulos]], and other filmmakers to distribute [[avant-garde film]]s through a centralised archive. | + | [[New American Cinema]] is the name given to the practices of a group of [[Avant-garde film in the United States|experimental filmmakers in the United States]]. Its motto is revealed in the first manifesto of the '''New American Cinema Group''' on [[September 30]], [[1962]]: "We don't want rosy films - we want them the color of blood". |
| + | "The very concept of “New American Cinema” can be confusing" says Antonio Weinrichter in the introduction to the 2004 Gijon film festival [http://www.gijonfilmfestival.com/index.php?lang=2&id=12¬i=2], "What is referred to as New American Cinema coincides with the [[French New Wave|New European Waves]] in time (the 60s), but it also indicates the initial point of would later be called Underground Cinema. New American Cinema or New Hollywood, was also that of the “Golden Age”, from 1967 to 1976, the era in which the gates of the studios opened to let barbarians in, thus favouring a whole generational and aesthetical revolution. Nevertheless, this was a Cinema produced within the industry: the equivalent of New European Cinema would perhaps be the Independent Cinema, but this movement surfaced later, during the first half of the 80s. On the other hand, the influence and the importance of American experimental and documentary cinema also suggest the integration of these two “genres”, which are essentially outside of the industry, within it." | ||
| == See also == | == See also == | ||
| + | *[[The Film-Makers' Cooperative]] | ||
| *[[Avant-garde film in the United States]] | *[[Avant-garde film in the United States]] | ||
| - | ==The New American Cinema and Structural-Materialism== | + | *[[The New American Cinema and Structural-Materialism]] |
| - | The film society and self-financing model continued over the next two decades, but by the early 1960s, a different outlook became perceptible in the work of American avant-garde filmmakers. As [[P. Adams Sitney]] has pointed out, in the work of [[Stan Brakhage]] and other American experimentalists of early period, film is used to express the individual consciousness of the maker, a cinematic equivalent of the first person in literature. [[Brakhage]]'s ''[[Dog Star Man]]'' exemplified a shift from personal confessional to abstraction, and also evidenced a rejection of American mass culture of the time. On the other hand, [[Kenneth Anger]] added a rock sound track to his ''[[Scorpio Rising]]'' in what is sometimes said to be an anticipation of music videos, and included some camp commentary on Hollywood mythology. [[Jack Smith (film director)|Jack Smith]] and [[Andy Warhol]] incorporated camp elements into their work, and Sitney posited Warhol's connection to structural film. | + | *[[Structural film]] |
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| - | Some avant-garde filmmakers moved further away from narrative. Whereas the New American Cinema was marked by an oblique take on narrative, one based on abstraction, camp and minimalism, Structural-Materialist filmmakers like [[Hollis Frampton]] and [[Michael Snow]] created a highly [[formalist]] cinema that foregrounded the medium itself: the frame, projection, and most importantly time . It has sometimes been argued that by breaking film down into bare components, they sought to create an anti-illusionist cinema, but this is an oversimplifaction: Frampton's late works, for example, owe a huge debt to the photography of [[Edward Weston]], [[Paul Strand]], and others, and in fact celebrate illusion. Further, while many filmmakers began making rather academic "structural films" following the publication of [[P. Adams Sitney]]'s landmark article in [[Film Culture]] in the late 1960s, most or possibly all of the filmakers he named in his article objected to the term. | + | |
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| - | A review of the structuralists appeared in a 2000 edition of the art journal "Art In America". The review was devastating: cold, a little alienated perhaps a product of its time at the end of the Vietnam War, and in the midst of the Cold War, the work seemed dated, and perhaps too inward. it reflected a yearning for a simpler view of both communism and the U.S. The review examined the ways in which structural-formalism is actually quite a conservative philosophy of filmmaking. (Art In America.) | + | |
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| - | Main article: [[Structural film]] | + | |
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Revision as of 09:20, 1 June 2011
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New American Cinema is the name given to the practices of a group of experimental filmmakers in the United States. Its motto is revealed in the first manifesto of the New American Cinema Group on September 30, 1962: "We don't want rosy films - we want them the color of blood".
"The very concept of “New American Cinema” can be confusing" says Antonio Weinrichter in the introduction to the 2004 Gijon film festival [1], "What is referred to as New American Cinema coincides with the New European Waves in time (the 60s), but it also indicates the initial point of would later be called Underground Cinema. New American Cinema or New Hollywood, was also that of the “Golden Age”, from 1967 to 1976, the era in which the gates of the studios opened to let barbarians in, thus favouring a whole generational and aesthetical revolution. Nevertheless, this was a Cinema produced within the industry: the equivalent of New European Cinema would perhaps be the Independent Cinema, but this movement surfaced later, during the first half of the 80s. On the other hand, the influence and the importance of American experimental and documentary cinema also suggest the integration of these two “genres”, which are essentially outside of the industry, within it."
See also
- The Film-Makers' Cooperative
- Avant-garde film in the United States
- The New American Cinema and Structural-Materialism
- Structural film
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "New American Cinema" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
