[Frameworks] seminal writing on American a/g film after 76

[Fred Camper]

Quoting Stashu Kybartas <skybar1 at me.com>:

> There is no avant-garde now.  The internet insures that NOTHING will  
> stay avant - EVER.

I tried to make this point pre-Internet, in my 1986 article "The End  
of Avant-Garde Film" in the 20th anniversary issue of "Millennium Film  
Journal."
By 1986, in my opinion, common usage was that an "experimental" or  
"avant-garde" film was a film with certain features, such as  
scratching or painting on film, a limited or abstracted narrative,  
non-linear editing, very small cast and crew, and others -- some of  
these if not all of them. Scratching on film was by then no longer  
"avant-garde," in the sense of new or advanced, and the terms  
"experimental" and "avant-garde" has come to denote a style of  
filmmaking. This is neither good nor bad, but one important reason to  
understand it is that artists must realize that techniques already  
used don't justify themselves; everything depends on the total work.

Fred Camper
Chicago