What is the creative impetus for "experimental" film?

uh... if it uh, feels good, do it

*Considers using moderator's privileges to delete that giveaway*

http://www.roberthaller.com/firstlight/
http://vax.wcsu.edu/~MCCARNEY/fva/FVAF.html

Well, I think you can order some stuff here:
http://www.eai.org/eai/

Palmpictures.com and plexifilm.com have more mainstream stuff, which i don't consider that experimental ... this is just fyi, if you didn't already know.

The NYMoCA has a large viewing area with decent films, if you're in NY.

There is a company who was originally behind the DVD of Cremaster called Art House Pictures or something along those lines and they had a lot of really good art films for sale, lots of Robert Frank and Joan Jonas ... etc. I cannot remember their exact name and website, but it is mentioned on the Cremaster posters, if you have access to that.

Guess I didn't help you at all then ...

The rental prices for screening are very expensive from video data bank, but you can order many films for "individual use" for $30 each. They're also the only place to find Jem Cohen's short films, which are phenomenal if you haven't seen any. "Lost Book Found" has probably had more of an influence on the way I make films than any other work.

When you are spending your days shooting something very specific (like a product) or creating this grandiose scenes in a film to get a paycheck, it is amazing how wonderful it feels to white balance your camera against a red blanket, turn the shutter speed down to 1/4, zoom your camera in close, blur the focus, and shoot the wonderful swirls of color resulting from cars passing by out of your front window. or the swirling demonic blob created by your cat waking from a nap.

what i'm trying to say is, it's wonderful to create your own world, full of intangible non-objects, or at least non-representational ones. i guess that's why, by the end, brakhage stopped shooting altogether and just painted on the film.

The digital video work is already doing some very interesting stuff with the Cycling74 group - it's essentially a video DSP - I've seen some live video performances, and when they know what they're doing, it's perfect. See 242 Pilots, for example.

Also see the whole Velazquez discussion in Pierrot le fou.

i'm not against developing one's own style, but i think the artist who let that happen naturally and freely instead of always using "specific techniques" are usually the ones who finally develop something vibrant and worthwhile.

the techniques and visualizations are easy once the inspiration is built. here's a good analogy in a different medium. my college roomate would stay up all night, making crazy loops and screeching tracks, strange, indecipherable sounds, and he did this for three years. just throwing together random effect pedals until he heard something that sounded good to him. to me some of it was actually physically painful to listen to, but some moments were really great, and they sounded like nothing i'd ever heard.

now, he's putting out these incredible albums that sound like nothing i'd ever heard. completely original and wonderful music. now, what would he be doing now if he had decided in college just to pick a sound and develop it? he'd sound like every other pretentious, hipster crap musician with a record deal.

it's the same thing with film. while you may think that just "fucking with the settings" is not a creative process, it is the same thing as patching a bunch of pedals together & listening for a sound. except i'm searching for an image. and i've found many that i like, and that many other people at my screenings have enjoyed as well.

And you're right about the Velazquez quote (it's one of my favorite films). Just remember that the chance elements of a new image probably came before his personal conception of exactly why he was making it.

did reich do that? it sounds more like a john cage thing. but cage & steve reich, and maybe for modern times, jandek, are perfect examples & my roomate would be flattered by the indirect comparison.

i hope i'm not starting any claws-out debates by what i'm posting. i guess it's just frustration over the fact that the principles that most experimental directors believe in are often ridiculed or dismissed in the way that the "just fucking with the settings" post did. there is a long and time-tested tradition, as you have pointed out, in all forms of the arts which fully embraces the raw desire (animalistic? reptilian?) to create based on passion, with no concern for contrivances or making your place in any history or genre, just blind passion for an image or a sound or a blob of paint on a canvas or a particular grouping of pixels on a monitor. it's a true labor of love, and it feels like someone bad-mouthing your wife when they dismiss your artistic passions.

just imagine finding a video tape lying in the street---would you take it home and watch it or just leave it there? and what would you rather see on it, an episode of "friends" or some random shots you can't identify, whether in place or time? if you choose the latter, you should understand in some way where i'm coming from. but anonymous art is another discussion for another time...

I was only saying that there are more planned-out ways to experiment! That experimental != being totally random for randomness's sake. Because let's face it, many avants are accused of that - not that there's anything wrong with it. But as it is a stereotype, why not confront it and acknowledge that often a LOT of thought goes into each individual process and into perfecting it before shooting.

I have several experimental shots that I've conceived for years, but haven't been able to do for lack of equipment. Many of my friends come up with similar experimental ideas from time to time - not because they're trying to come up with one "for fame, glory" or whatever else you consider anti-hardcore (which there's nothing wrong with doing for those reasons - those reasons are why things like, oh say, the Renaissance happened). They're not sitting around looking for weird shit, it just happens to come to them.

The director's main impetus should be by visual possession and a relentless desire to fulfill the perfection of said visual possession (as impossible as the task inherently is).

Or so I would call it.

Thank you and goodnight.

again, didn't mean to have this turn in to anything beyond a simple defense of a particular artistic ideal & i apologize if it was interpreted as an attack or anything beyond what it was.