[Frameworks] Difference between

[Jaime Cleeland]

Jonathan and Fred,
I appreciate what both of you have written.  The avant garde is for me, largely as Jonathan mentioned ‘intro film class’ which I guess every film studies department briefly touches upon in the 1st year.  
Fred, the idea that ‘Underground’ could still work in a repressive country, is an interesting point and I will research that some more.

Thank you and stay healthy,
Jaime

Sent from my iPad

> On 2 Mar 2021, at 17:46, Fred Camper <f at fredcamper.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 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
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Mar 2, 2021, at 10:53 AM, Fred Camper <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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