American experimental cinema

In 1943 a dancer shot at home a fourteen-minute film in which a woman pursues herself through a house: Maya Deren opened a cinema with neither narrative nor industry, only images and duration. Brakhage painted and scratched the film stock itself, Anger cut bikers to pop songs, Snow held a single forty-five-minute zoom across a New York loft, Mekas filmed his own daily life for decades. This cinema is seen in cooperatives, museums and universities, almost never in ordinary picture houses.

works 5

• CinemaMeshes of the AfternoonMaya Deren and Alexander Hammid · 1943The first film of its director, it was shot without dialogue in the couple's bungalow, in the Hollywood hills, with her husband, a cameraman and documentary maker by trade.Cinema
• CinemaScorpio RisingKenneth Anger · 1963A film without commentary, it is edited to popular songs of the moment, from one track to the next.Cinema
• CinemaDog Star ManStan Brakhage · 1964A silent film in five parts, it superimposes up to four layers of images, some of them painted or scratched onto the film stock.Cinema
• CinemaWavelengthMichael Snow · 1967Forty-five minutes of a slow tightening of the frame across a New York loft, where a few human scenes pass by without one lingering on them.Cinema
• DocumentaryWalden: Diaries, Notes, and SketchesJonas Mekas · 1969The filmed diary of four years of life in New York, made of fragments caught on the spot.Cinema