Richardson and that attempted to capture the
unedited flow of experience through the mind. In
Meshes, Deren is both the creative mind behind the
film and the creative performer on the screen. She
takes certain recognizable motifs—a key, a knife,
a flower, a telephone receiver, and a shadowy figure
walking down a garden path—and repeats them
throughout the film, each time transfiguring them
into something else. So, for example, the knife
evolves into a key and the flower into a knife. These
changing motifs are linked visually but also struc-
turally. Deren’s ideas and achievements bridge the
gap between the surrealism of the French avant-
garde films and such dream-related movies as
Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad(1961), Fed-
erico Fellini’s 81 ⁄ 2 (1963), Ingmar Bergman’s Persona
(1966), and Luis Buñuel’s The Milky Way(1969).
Greatly influenced by Deren’s work, an Ameri-
can underground cinema emerged in the 1950s and
has since favored four subgenres—the formal, the
self-reflexive, the satirical, and the sexual—each of
which tends to include aspects of the lyrical
approach so typical of Deren. Works of pure form
include John Whitney’s early experiments with
computer imagery in such films as Matrix Iand
Matrix II(both 1971); Shirley Clarke’s Skyscraper
(1960), one of several lighthearted, abstract tributes
to city life; Peter Kubelka’s Arnulf Rainer(1960),
which created its images through abstract dots;
Jordan Belson’s Allures(1961), using abstract color
animation; Robert Breer’s Fist Fight(1964), which
combines animation, images of handwriting, and
other material; and Ernie Gehr’s The Astronomer’s
Dream(2004), in which he speeds up the images so
much that they become vertical purple lines.
Self-reflexive films, meaning those that repre-
sent their own conditions of production (movies,
in other words, about movies, moviemaking,
moviemakers, and so on), include Hans Richter’s
Dreams That Money Can Buy(1947), in the spirit of
surrealism; Stan Brakhage’s five-part Dog Star Man
(1962–64), whose lyricism is greatly influenced by
Deren’s work; Bruce Baillie’s Mass for the Dakota
Sioux(1964), which combines a lyrical vision and
social commentary; Hollis Frampton’s Zorn’s Lemma
(1970), a complex meditation on cinematic struc-
ture, space, and movement; and Michael Snow’s
Wavelength(1967), which we already discussed.
Films that take a satirical view of life include
James Broughton’s Mother’s Day(1948), on child-
hood; Stan van der Beek’s Death Breath (1964),
an apocalyptic vision using cartoons and other
imagery; Bruce Conner’s Marilyn Times Five(1973),
which makes its comic points by compiling stock
footage from other sources; and Mike Kuchar’s Sins
of the Fleshapoids(1965), an underground look at
the horror genre.
Satirical and sexual films often overlap, particu-
larly in their portrayal of sexual activities that chal-
lenge conventional ideas of “normality.” Examples
of these include Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising
(1964), an explicit homosexual fantasy that is tame
by today’s standards; Jack Smith’s Flaming Crea-
tures (1963), a major test case for pornography
laws; and many of Andy Warhol’s films, including
Lonesome Cowboys(1968). The directors who made
these films tended to be obsessed, as was Deren,
with expressing themselves and their subconscious
through cinematic forms and images.
These days, movies that seem to be in direct
opposition to Camper’s experimental film criteriaManipulated footageNaomi Uman’s Removed(1999)
employs a reductive approach to found-footage filmmaking
that made audiences reinterpret and reexamine previously
existing footage. She used nail polish and bleach to remove
the female character from the emulsion of all 10,000 frames
of a 7-minute pornographic movie. The result forces the
viewer to experience the objectification of women in a
literal——or at least graphic——sense. The film’s female
character appears as an animated blank space, which is
physically manipulated by the male actors.
TYPES OF MOVIES 81