Film genre
Structural film
was an avant-garde
experimental film
movement prominent in the
United States
in the 1960s. A related movement developed in the
United Kingdom
in the 1970s.
[1]
[2]
History
[
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]
United States
[
edit
]
The earliest films associated with the structural film movement emerged during the mid 1960s. New York filmmakers from this period whose work was later associated with the term were
Tony Conrad
,
Hollis Frampton
,
Ernie Gehr
,
Ken Jacobs
,
George Landow
,
Michael Snow
, and
Joyce Wieland
.
[3]
The earliest flicker films associated with structural film were made in 1966. Conrad, a
minimalist musician
, made
The Flicker
, where solid black and white frames are arranged in different frequencies to produce a flicker effect. Visual artist
Paul Sharits
made several flicker films?
Ray Gun Virus
,
Piece Mandala/End War
, and the
Fluxus
film
Word Movie
?in an effort to revisit "the basic mechanisms of motion pictures…working toward a new conception of cinema." The two filmmakers made their respective works with knowledge of neither each other's practices nor earlier examples of flicker films.
[3]
Snow's
Wavelength
(1967) quickly became a turning point. The film shows a loft for 45 minutes from a fixed perspective, progressively zooming across the room with variations in the image coming from
color gels
, different
film stocks
,
superimpositions
, and
negative images
. It won the International Experimental Film Festival and was soon recognized as the movement's most significant work.
[3]
[4]
By the late 1960s, the structural film movement coincided with a shift in experimental cinema away from
1960s counterculture
and toward closer affiliations with academia and
film theory
.
[5]
[6]
In 1969
Film Culture
magazine published
P. Adams Sitney
's essay "Structural Film", in which he coined the term.
[7]
He published two revisions in the following years.
[3]
Anthology Film Archives
, opened in 1970, was established as an exhibition venue for avant-garde cinema and included structural films in its programming.
[8]
The structural film movement was concurrent with a renaissance of the
Library of Congress
's Paper Print Collection. Since the early 1950s, the library had been making
film negatives
from its archive of
paper prints
, used to establish copyright on early cinematic works until 1912. These new prints began to circulate starting in the mid to late 1960s.
[9]
[10]
The sudden availability of these prints generated interest in their intermediate state between still and moving image. Filmmakers such as Jacobs and Frampton made use of the Paper Print Collection as source material for new films.
[9]
[11]
United Kingdom
[
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]
In the United Kingdom, a related "structural/materialist" film movement emerged during the 1970s, similarly focused on the material properties of film. These filmmakers, often associated with the
London Film-Makers' Co-op
, included David Crosswaite, Fred Drummond,
John Du Cane
, Mike Dunford, Gill Eatherley, Peter Gidal, Roger Hammond, Mike Leggett,
Malcolm Le Grice
, and William Raban.
[12]
[13]
Overview
[
edit
]
The term was coined by P. Adams Sitney who noted that film artists had moved away from the complex and condensed forms of cinema practiced by such artists as
Sidney Peterson
and
Stan Brakhage
. "Structural film" artists pursued instead a more simplified, sometimes even predetermined art. The shape of the film was crucial, the content peripheral. This term should not be confused with the literary and philosophical term
structuralism
.
[14]
Characteristics
[
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]
Sitney identified four formal characteristics common in Structural films, but all four characteristics are not usually present in any single film:
- fixed camera position (an apparently fixed framing)
- flicker effect (strobing due to the intermittent nature of film)
- loop printing
- rephotography (off the screen)
It has been noted by
George Maciunas
that these characteristics are also present in
Fluxus
films.
[15]
Key films
[
edit
]
- The Flicker
(
Tony Conrad
, 1965)
[16]
- Wavelength
(
Michael Snow
, 1966?67)
[17]
- T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G
(
Paul Sharits
, 1968)
[18]
- One Second in Montreal
(
Michael Snow
, 1969)
[19]
- Zorns Lemma
(
Hollis Frampton
, 1970)
[20]
- Serene Velocity
(
Ernie Gehr
, 1970)
[21]
- Remedial Reading Comprehension
(
George Landow
, 1971)
[22]
- The United States of America
(
James Benning
and
Bette Gordon
, 1975)
[23]
- The Girl Chewing Gum
(
John Smith
, 1976)
[24]
Key filmmakers
[
edit
]
See also
[
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]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Gidal, Peter, ed. (1978).
Structural Film Anthology
(PDF)
. London: British Film Institute. p. 150.
ISBN
0-85170-0535
.
- ^
Dictionary of Film
- ^
a
b
c
d
Cornwell, Regina (September 1979). "Structural Film: Ten Years Later".
TDR: The Drama Review
.
23
(3): 77?92.
doi
:
10.2307/1145231
.
JSTOR
1145231
.
- ^
Michelson, Annette
(1971).
"Toward Snow"
.
Artforum
. Vol. 9, no. 10. pp. 30?37.
- ^
Hoberman 1984, pp. 64?65.
- ^
Zryd, Michael (2006).
"The Academy and the Avant-Garde: A Relationship of Dependence and Resistance"
.
Cinema Journal
.
45
(2): 17?42.
doi
:
10.1353/cj.2006.0023
.
- ^
Sitney, P. Adams
(1969). "Structural Film".
Film Culture
. No. 47. pp. 1?10.
- ^
Hoberman 1984, p. 65.
- ^
a
b
Habib 2021, pp. 267?274.
- ^
Canby, Vincent (February 29, 1968). "Restored Films, Dating to 1894, Shed Light on Medium's History".
The New York Times
. p. 31.
- ^
Habib 2017, pp. 31?50.
- ^
Newland 2015, p. 78.
- ^
Gidal 1978.
- ^
Ways of Seeing: Yoel Meranda's Web Site-Structural Film
- ^
Fluxus Film: George Maciunas Manifesto, Avant-Garde, and Anti-Art
- ^
The Flicker - Tony Conrad - The Film-Makers' Cooperative
- ^
Wavelength - Michael Snow - The Film-Makers' Cooperative
- ^
Paul Sharits: Expanding Cinema to the Beyond-Offscreen
- ^
Visionary Film - Google Books (pg.356)
- ^
Zorns Lemma - Hollis Frampton - The Film-Makers' Cooperative
- ^
New Works by Ernie Gehr - Harvard Film Archive
- ^
George Landow obituary - The Guardian
- ^
"
The United States of America
"
.
The Criterion Channel
. Archived from
the original
on September 27, 2020
. Retrieved
June 10,
2022
.
- ^
John Smith|Frieze
- ^
"Directed by Bette Gordon"
.
The Criterion Channel
. Archived from
the original
on June 26, 2020
. Retrieved
June 10,
2022
.
- ^
Where to begin with Hollis Frampton|BFI
- ^
Scratching the Surface: The Birth of Structural/Materialist Film
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- Gidal, Peter.
Materialist Film
Routledge; First Edition, Second Impression edition (Mar. 1989).
- de Lauretis, Teresa and Stephen Heath (eds).
The Cinematic Apparatus
. Macmillan, 1980.
- Habib, Andre (2017). "Drafts and Fragments: Reflections around Bill Morrison and the Paper Print Collection". In Herzogenrath, Bernd (ed.).
The Films of Bill Morrison: Aesthetics of the Archive
.
Amsterdam University Press
.
ISBN
978-90-8964-996-6
.
- Habib, Andre (2021). "Finding Early Cinema in the Avant-Garde: Research and Investigation". In Bernardi, Joanne; Cherchi Usai, Paolo; Williams, Tami; Yumibe, Joshua (eds.).
Provenance and Early Cinema
.
Indiana University Press
.
doi
:
10.2307/j.ctv1b742kt.25
.
ISBN
978-0-253-05299-5
.
- Heath, Stephen.
Questions of Cinema
. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1981.
- Gidal, Peter, ed. (1978).
Structural Film Anthology
.
British Film Institute
.
ISBN
0-85170-0535
.
- Hoberman, J.
(1984). "After Avant-Garde Film". In Wallis, Brian (ed.).
Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation
.
The New Museum of Contemporary Art
.
ISBN
978-0-87923-563-5
.
- Maciunas, George. "Some Comments on
Structural Film
by P. Adams Sitney."
Film Culture,
No. 47, 1969.
- Newland, Paul (2015).
British Films of the 1970s
.
Manchester University Press
.
ISBN
978-0-7190-8225-2
.
- O'Pray, Michael.
The British Avant-Garde Film 1926 to 1995: An Anthology of Writings
. Indiana University Press, 2003.
- Sitney, P. Adams.
Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde 1943-1978.
Second Edition, Oxford University Press 1979
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