[Frameworks] Difference between

Tue Mar 2 18:37:33 UTC 2021

Jaime, to elaborate on Fred’s point just a bit, “underground” has a very specific meaning in, say, Chinese cinema. Official films must be submitted to a CCP censorship board. Only official films get released. But there are “underground” filmmakers whose work circulates as samizdat, and is shown in unofficial festival settings. Many of the most lauded Chinese filmmakers, such as Jia Zhangke and Wang Xiaoshuai, began underground, then “became” official.

There is a somewhat similar process in Iran. 

Michael Sicinski

Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 2, 2021, at 11:33 AM, Jaime Cleeland <ethnomite at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> 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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