[Frameworks] Difference between

[Fred Camper]

Dear Jonathan,

I mostly agree with what you wrote too, including your disagreement with 
me. You are getting at many important nuances. I'm not a huge fan of 
Rose Lowder's films, but when I heard her introduce her work as 
"experimental," as in, "I make these not certain of what I am going to 
get," I had to acknowledge, in accordance with my "dogma" that there are 
no rules for making art, that her position is as valid as any other.

Certainly seeing my first "avant-garde" film at 15 felt like an 
"avant-garde" experience, in that I had never seen anything like it. 
Most single screen work being made in decades since, however, does seem 
to be working, at least on a superficial viewing, within existing 
traditions.

In my experience with young film students reared on a diet of YouTube 
and the rest, most are not all that surprised by anything.

Fred Camper
Chicago

On 3/2/2021 10:11 AM, Jonathan Walley wrote:
> I agree with everything Fred says here, with one exception, I guess. 
> /Un Chien Andalou/ (or /Mothlight/, or /Meshes of the Afternoon/, etc. 
> etc. etc.) is still avant-garde to an 18-year-old hayseed in an intro 
> film class. Generally “avant-garde” is thought of as an historical 
> designation and so, as Fred implies “It might work in a repressive 
> country in which you could not really show your films”), but I also 
> tend to think of it as an effect. In that case, the relevant history 
> is not global, but personal - the history of the hayseed.
>
> [I know “hayseed” is impolite, but I just mean it as blanket term for 
> innocent eyes, and after all, I do teach in Ohio].
>
> I do think that underground is more specific than experimental or 
> avant-garde, with historically-bound connotations (certain variants of 
> experimental film output of the 1960s into the early 1980s, with punk 
> film and the cinema of transgression as examples). While I am wary of 
> the implication of “experimental” to which Fred alludes (as in, 
> “they’re just experimenting; eventually they’ll get it right”), I 
> still think it’s the least loaded, most neutral term to encompass a 
> cinematic tradition that, if heterogeneous to the point of anarchy, is 
> nonetheless discernible. “Underground” and “avant-garde” can be 
> considered sub-categories, I suppose.
>
> For what it’s worth…
>
> JW
>
>
> Jonathan Walley
> Associate Professor
> Department of Cinema
> Denison University
> https://denison.edu/people/jonathan-walley 
> <https://denison.edu/people/jonathan-walley>
>
>
>
>
>> On Mar 2, 2021, at 10:53 AM, Fred Camper <f at fredcamper.com 
>> <mailto:f at fredcamper.com>> wrote:
>>
>> I've given this issue, along with that of "experimental," more 
>> thought than it perhaps deserves.
>>
>> I don't think "underground" works at all today. It only barely worked 
>> in the 60s. It might work in a repressive country in which you could 
>> not really show your films. Our culture, whatever one thinks of it, 
>> has become too open and too diverse for this word. But I don't think 
>> "avant-garde" works either. So much has been done; most filmmakers 
>> are working within existing traditions. Nor is "experimental" of much 
>> use, except for a minority who, for better or for worse, feel that 
>> the word is right for them. A response to that word from one 
>> filmmaker decades ago: "I made many experiments while working on this 
>> film. I left them behind in my editing room. What you will see is a 
>> finished work."
>>
>> On the other hand, just calling these works "films" doesn't work 
>> either; your viewers will be for most such films be disappointed to 
>> find no evidence of Batman, or Luke Skywalker, or similarFrame. We 
>> need a neologism, but I have never found one.
>>
>> Fred Camper
>> Chicago
>>
>> On 3/2/2021 2:33 AM, Jaime Cleeland wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> How would y’all differentiate between calling a filmmaker 
>>> ‘Underground’ as opposed to ‘Avant-Garde’?
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Jaime
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>
>>
>> -- 
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>
>
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