Experimental Cinema: The Film Reader
2003; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 55; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1934-6018
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoEXPERIMENTAL CINEMA: THE FILM READER Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, eds. London: Routledge, 2002,356 pp. A recent addition to Routledge's In Focus film series, Experimental Cinema: Film Reader offers a wide selection of history, theory, criticism, interviews, and original writings by filmmakers of the American avant-garde. Editors (and contributors) Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster include a diverse selection of essays, which range, as is typical of most anthologies, from the invaluable to the useless, depending on the reader's interests and tastes. Still, any reader will ultimately find this collection a welcome addition to the literature on a form of filmmakingthat has received limited critical attention. Dixon and Foster divide the sixteen essays, which appear in chronological order, into four sections, each with its own specific theoretical focus. As the table of contents reveals, the title is misleading because the collection emphasizes American experimental cinema. While some readers may find this problematic, the editors' decision to include essays for their depth, as opposed to their breadth, will be appreciated. This is particularly true of the early chapters, which most books on the subject devote to the European avant-garde of the 19205 and 19305. (Witness the oft-referenced An Introduction to the American Underground Film, by Sheldon Renan [1967], in which, despite the title, the author spends most of his discussion of 19205 and 19305 filmmaking on Richter, Ray, Clair, Bunuel, and Vertov.) Dixon and Foster begin instead with one of the true gems of the collection, Jan-Christopher Horak's The First American Film Avant-garde, 1919-1945. Horak weaves a beautiful narrative of the selfdescribed American amateurs' cinema, one that places the American scene in romantic contrast to the more famous European avantgarde. It may seem strange for a discussion of amateurs to include the works of Robert Flaherty, Robert Florey, EHa Kazan, Jay Leyda, Ralph Steiner, Paul Strand, and Orson Welles. However, Horak is detailing (mostly) the earliest works of these and other lesser filmmakers. This raises interesting questions for more mainstream histories and should prove empowering to aspiring students. Horak also details exhibition venues and audiences, and he points to the Eurocentrism of the Museum of Modern Art's film archive, then still new, as one important reason his subject has been historically marginalized. Part one, entitled Origins of the American Avant-garde Cinema, 1920-1959, also includes writing from Jonas Mekas (his classic essay Notes on the New American Cinema), Lauren Rabinovitz, and Judith Mayne. Rabinovitz's essay centers on Maya Deren, with peripheral attention to Shirley Clarke and Joyce Wieland, and concerns the importance of filmmaking as a viable medium for women in the macho milieu of the 19405 and 19505 New York art scene. However, Judith Mayne's essay, Women in the Avant-garde: Germaine Dulac, Maya Deren, Agnes Varda, Chantal Akerman, and Trinh T. Minh-ha, feels somewhat out of place in this distinctly American and chronological book. Mayne's essay applies Tom Gunning's connection between primitive early cinema and the avant-garde to demonstrate a stylistic thread running through the works of these five filmmakers. Admitting a lack of expertise in feminist film theory, I have to say that Mayne's essay, which seems highly tenuous and reaching throughout, is one of the text's low points. five filmmakers in question certainly have some stylistic affinities, but not remarkably more or less than what one might find in a more random sample of experimentalists. Having said that, Mayne's thoughtful conclusions regarding Akerman are illuminating. second part, The 19605 Experimental Cinema Explosion, is a mixed bag, including separate queer theory analyses of Anger's Scorpio Rising (1964) and the various works of Jack Smith, but perhaps it is telling that the most compelling items are interviews. …
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