involving experience than most conventional nar -
rative or documentary treatments of similar sub-
ject matter.
While Wavelengthexplores cinematic space and
Sink or Swimfocuses on personal expression, other
experimental films are primarily concerned with
the tactile and communicative qualities of the film
medium itself. These movies scavenge found
footage—originally created by other filmmakers for
other purposes—and then manipulate the gleaned
images to create new meanings and aesthetics not
intended by the artists or technicians who shot the
original footage.
To create Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies under
America(1992), his feature-length satire of para-
noid conspiracy theories, Craig Baldwin collected
thousands of still and moving images from a wide
variety of mostly vintage sources, including educa-
tional films, scientific studies, and low-budget hor-
ror movies. By combining, superimposing, and
sequencing selected shots, and overlaying the
result with ominous text and urgent voice-over nar-
ration, Baldwin changes the image context and
meaning, thus transforming the way audiences
interpret and experience the footage.
Experimental filmmaker Martin Arnold also
manipulates preexisting footage to alter the viewer’s
interpretation and experience with a method that
is in many ways the reverse of Baldwin’s frenetic
collage approach. Arnold’s most famous film, Passage
à l’acte(1993), uses only one sequence from a sin-
gle source: a short, relatively mundane breakfast-
table scene from Robert Mulligan’s narrative feature
To Kill a Mockingbird(1962). Using an optical printer,
which allows the operator to duplicate one film
frame at a time onto a new strip of film stock, Arnold
stretched the 34-second sequence to over 11 minutes
by rhythmically repeating every moment in the
scene. The result forces us to see the familiar char-
acters and situation in an entirely new way. What
was originally an innocent and largely inconse-
quential exchange is infused with conflict and
tension. Through multiple and rapid-fire repetitions,
a simple gesture such as putting down a fork or
glancing sideways becomes a hostile or provocative
gesture, a mechanical loop, or an abstract dance.
Like many experimental films, Passage à l’actedelib-
erately challenges the viewer’s ingrained expecta-
tions of narrative, coherence, continuity, movement,
and for ward momentum. The resulting experience
is hypnotic, musical, disturbing, fascinating, and
infuriating.
It’s easy to assume that films that test the audi-
ence’s expectations of how a movie should behave
are a relatively recent phenomenon. But the truth
is that filmmakers have been experimenting with
film form and reception since the very early days of
cinema. In the 1920s, the first truly experimental
movement was born in France, with its national cli-
mate of avant-garde artistic expression. Among the
most notable works were films by painters: René
Clair’s Entr’acte(1924), Fernand Léger and Dudley
Murphy’s Ballet mécanique(1924), Marcel Duchamp’s
Anémic cinéma(1926), and Man Ray’s Emak-Bakia
(1926). These films are characterized uniformly by
their surreal content, often dependent on dream
impressions rather than objective observation;
their abstract images, which tend to be shapes and
patterns with no meaning other than the forms
themselves; their absence of actors performing
within a narrative context; and their desire to shock
not only our sensibilities but also our morals. The
most important of these films, the surrealist dream-
scape An Andalusian Dog(1929), was made in France
by the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel and the
Spanish painter Salvador Dalí. Re-creating the sex-
ual nature of dreams, this film’s images metamor-
phose continually, defy continuity, and even attack
causality—as in one scene when a pair of breasts
dissolves into buttocks.
Although an alternative cinema has existed in
the United States since the 1920s—an achievement
of substance and style that is all the more remark-
able in a country where filmmaking is synonymous
with Hollywood—the first experimental filmmak-
ers here were either European-born or influenced
by the French, Russians, and Germans. The first
major American experimental filmmaker was Maya
Deren, whose surreal films—Meshes of the Afternoon
(1943), codirected with her husband, Alexander
Hammid, is the best known—virtually established
alternative filmmaking in this country. Deren’s
work combines her interests in various fields,
including film, philosophy, ethnography, and dance,TYPES OF MOVIES 79