Experimental Filmmaking emerges out of a deep and abiding love of celluloid and artisanal media practices and a personal exploration of the field of avant-garde and experimental film, animation and video produced since the beginnings of cinema. Although there have been many critical and historical books on the subject, with the exception of zines and hand-published volumes, there has never been a comprehensive instructional manual on experimental processes. This book will introduce film students and professional filmmakers alike to various methods of experimental animation, film and video production that involve material interventions into the normative process of the medium while offering brief introductions to artists and their works.

Experimental Filmmaking and the Motion Picture Camera is an introductory guide to experimental filmmaking, surveying the practical methods of experimental film production as well as the history, theory, and aesthetics of experimental approaches. Author Joel Schlemowitz explains the basic mechanism of the camera before going on to discuss slow and fast motion filming, single-frame time lapse, the long take, camera movement, workings of the lens, and the use of in-camera effects such as double exposure. A comprehensive guide to using the 16mm Bolex camera is provided. Strategies for making films edited in-camera are covered. A range of equipment beyond the basic non-sync camera is surveyed. The movie diary and film portrait are examined, along with the work of a range of experimental filmmakers including Stan Brakhage, Rudy Burckhardt, Paul Clipson, Christopher Harris, Peter Hutton, Takahiko Iimura, Marie Losier, Rose Lowder, Jonas Mekas, Marie Menken, Margaret Rorison, Guy Sherwin, and Tomonari Nishikawa. This is the ideal book for students interested in experimental and alternative modes of filmmaking. It provides invaluable insight into the history, methods, and concepts inherent to experimental uses of the camera, while providing students with a solid foundation of techniques and practices to foster their development as filmmakers. Supplemental material, including links to films cited in the book, can be found at www.experimentalfilmmaking.com.

Just as punk created a space for bands such as the Slits and Poly Styrene to challenge 1970s norms of femininity, through a transgressive, strident new female-ness, it also provoked experimental feminist film makers to initiate a parallel, lens-based challenge to patriarchal modes of film making. In this book, Rachel Garfield breaks new ground in exploring the rebellious, feminist punk audio-visual culture of the 1970s, tracing its roots and its legacies. In their filmmaking and their performed personae, film and video artists such as Vivienne Dick, Sandra Lahire, Betzy Bromberg, Ruth Novaczek, Sadie Benning, Leslie Thornton, Abigail Child and Anne Robinson offered a powerful, deliberately awkward alternative to hegemonic conformist femininity, creating a new “punk audio visual aesthetic”. A vital aspect of our vibrant contemporary digital audio visual culture, Garfield argues, can be traced back to the techniques and forms of these feminist pioneers, who like their musical contemporaries worked in a pre-digital, analogue modality that nevertheless influenced the emergent digital audio visual culture of the 1990s and 2000s.

Women and Experimental Filmmaking gathers essays by some of the top scholars in cinema studies dealing with women experimental filmmakers. Tracking the topic across racial, economic, geographic, and even temporal boundaries, Jean Petrolle and Virginia Wexman's selections refiect the deep diversity of methodologies and research. The introduction sets out by addressing the basic difficulties of both historiography and definition before providing a historical overview of how these particular filmmakers have helped shape moviemaking traditions. The essays explore the major theoretical controversies that have arisen around the work of groundbreaking women such as Leslie Thornton, Su Friedrich, Nina Menkes, and Faith Hubley. With the film- makers representations of women's subjectivity ranging across film, video, digital media, ethnography, animation, and collage, Women and Experimental Filmmaking represents the full spectrum of genres, techniques, and modes.

An exploration of what experimental cinema was, is, and might become A Companion to Experimental Cinema is a collection of original essays organized around both theoretical and historical issues of concern to film scholars, programmers, filmmakers, and viewers. Newly-commissioned essays written by specialists in the field, along with dialogues conducted with a diverse range of practitioners, focus on core subjects to present an international array of overlapping and contrasting perspectives. This unique text not only provides detailed accounts of particular films and filmmakers, but also discusses new approaches of understanding, characterizing, and shaping experimental cinema. The Companion offers readers an accessible point of entry to the material while seeking to contribute to scholarly debates. Essays explore a wide range of topics within the realm of experimental film, including the shift from traditional biography to broader contexts, the increased attention afforded to local and transnational circuits of exchange, and the deepening of theoretical considerations regarding cultural identity and cinematic aesthetics. Key themes and concepts are inter-woven throughout the text, offering fresh perspectives on experimental cinema’s dialogues with other modes and practices of film and video, its interactions with the non-cinematic arts, its responses to changing technological landscapes, and more. An essential addition to the field, the Companion: Balances introductory summaries and scholarly dialogue with existing literature Explores how the study of experimental cinema can benefit from scholarship in other disciplines Includes numerous analyses of films that are readily available to view via digital media Discusses both canonical and obscure or neglected works Examines the effects of the growing diversification of experimental film scholarship A Companion to Experimental Cinema is a valuable resource for scholars of film studies and art history, curators and programmers, critics and bloggers, filmmakers and artists, and anyone interested in exploring experimental or avant-garde cinema.

Discussing a variety of independent and experimental Italian films, this book gives voice to a critcically neglected form of Italian cinema. By examining the work of directors such as Marinella Pirelli, Mirko Locatelli and Cesrae Zavattini, the book defines, inspects and studies the cinematic panorama of Italy through a new lens. It thereby explores the character of independent films and their related practices within the Italian historical, cultural and cinematic landscape.

You ought to be making pictures. Designed for people who want to tell a story their way, The Complete Idiot’s Guide® to Independent Filmmaking explains everything a budding auteur needs to know—from literary development and financial and organizational pre-production to principal photography production, post-production assembly, exhibition and distribution, and more. • The advent of desktop editing and a wide range of consumer cameras enable the average person to create a “film studio” at home. • A great “textbook” for novice filmmakers, whether film students or on-their-own auteurs. • The proliferation of film festivals around the world, many of which encourage submissions from “amateur” filmmakers, shows there are countless filmmakers who aren’t learning the ropes in school. • Author has terrific credentials and has a feature-length script in development in Hollywood.

Brings together key writings on American avant-garde cinema to explore the long tradition of underground filmmaking from its origins in the 1920s to the work of contemporary film and video artists.