An Introduction to Film

experimental films by such artists as Andy Warhol,
Ken Jacobs, Bruce Baillie, Carolee Schneemann,
Stan Brakhage, and Hollis Frampton. Of late, feature-
length animated films have thrived as never before.
All of these have had a liberating influence on main-
stream filmmaking.
In terms of industry economics and practices,
there were many new independent producers, a
new financing system by which actors independ-
ently arranged their contracts and compensation, a
new rating system, and the ability of consumers to
rent, buy, or stream movies for home screenings.
Combined, these had an impact on production, dis-
tribution, exhibition, and profits.
The New American Cinema is significant for
these many changes, both large and small, that
have transformed the complete structure of the
American film industry. Such redefinition and
reorganization constitutes a new era—comparable
in many ways to the golden age—one dependent on
tradition, eager for innovation, adapting to new

audiences, and always keeping its eye on the bot-

tom line.

Film history presents an impressive record

of achievement, ranging from the first modest

efforts to record images on film to the sophisti-

cated movies of today. Even as photography has

remained the basis of cinema, in a little more than

one hundred years film artists, technicians, and

business persons have proved themselves flexible

enough to meet, with innovative responses, each

challenge facing the medium. When audiences

demanded movies with stories as complex as those

476 CHAPTER 10FILM HISTORY

1

2

Documentary and experimental films as pure
cinemaBoth Albert and David Maysles’s Grey Gardens
(1975) [1] and Stan Brakhage’s Dog Star Man(1962–64) [2]
stand out in their respective fields—documentary and
experimental films—as superb examples of cinematic form.
Grey Gardensis a candid, intimate, and often funny look into
the lives of two extraordinary women who live together:
Mrs. Edith Beale (“Big Edie”) and her unmarried daughter,
Edith (“Little Edie”). The filmmakers (directors-as-editors) let
the film’s content shape its form. The women constantly
bicker and disagree with one another, so the editing pattern,
which juxtaposes one woman with the other, creates a line
between them and their views of the past and the present. It
is left to the audience to put the pieces together and decide
the nature of this power struggle. Dog Star Man, like Grey
Gardens, does not fit a categorical mold, although it is
considered a classic experimental film. Stan Brakhage’s
techniques include superimposing four sequences at once—
a kind of visual juxtaposition, similar to that used by the
director-editors of Grey Gardensin creating multiple
meanings—and cutting into the frame to add new material
to it. Both movies are pure cinema: work that explores the
meaning and experiments with potential of the medium,
challenging our perceptions. Films such as these also help us
to understand that the work of Stanley Kubrick, another
maverick director, is also pure cinema. They involve, to quote
the title of one of Brakhage’s films, “the act of seeing with
our own eyes.”