Experimental Mental thoughts

Experimental cinema describes a filmmaking style that opposes the mainstream or commercial style most of us are used to.
"Avant-garde" is also used to describe this, as well as the term "underground filmmaking".
This "Experimental filmmaking"style covers a pretty wide range of practice and ideas. An experimental film is characterized by the absence of linear narrative, and or the use of abstracting techniques which covers a wide arena.
Some of these abstract techniques, if applied in mainstream filmmaking, would be considered a "mistake", or just plain novice filmmaking.
For instance, the use of soft focus, or images completely out of focus, (people get fired for these "mistakes"!), scratching of the film, (again, considered a huge "mistake" in narrative filmmaking where people get fired and are NOT called back to work ever again), painting on film, rapid editing, use of asynchronous sound, or even the absence of any sound track are NOT a part of any narrative form, hence thought of as novice filmmaking.
The idea of Experimental filmmaking is to put the viewer in a more active and thoughtful relationship to the film.

Research Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. Write four to five paragraphs on the film and explain why it was considered to be an important experimental film.




http://vimeo.com/6132324

*Bank of America columns taken with a fixed plastic lens on a Holga Camera, Dec 09