Responses

To Mr. Richter:

Your wrong. And your purism is off putting. Pure art and originality seem more like metaphysical realms of theorists than issues of the artist. I like to think that the purer art is less concerned with doing it right than doing it. Your theories about film seem dogmatic. I completely reject your hypothesis that narrative film is not original like experimental or documentary. Narrative film is not subservient to literature and theater, but rather literature, theater and film belong to a class of art that utilize story, whereas experimental does not, per se. Though the imagination is in some ways completely free in experimental film, I feel like of all the possible juxtapositions of illusions of photographic motion that can be found or created and put on film are more myriad and exciting than any oversized fingers can scratch, bleach, paint, etc.
Writing essays about varying degrees of art purity is onanistic. Anything and everything can be art. Why should anyone care if film as a medium isn't being utilized optimally according to an abstruse philosophy? Why don't experimental film makers branch out from film and use paper instead and make flip books? While fun, the whole direct film manipulation shebang seems like novelty use of materials.

To Mr. MacDonald:

I appreciated your take on avant-garde as an alternative that expands the definition of film as a whole, rather than at the top of a hierarchy, as I interpreted Mr. Richter's essay. You addressed the confusion and frustration many people feel when confronted with film well. It isn't that they are stupid, it's that they aren't trained for it. Picasso wasn't accepted when he was experimenting with new forms, but now he is one of the most well known artists of all time. Context is key, and more exposure means that one has a better idea of what it is. If, in exposing the uninitiated to avant garde film, one shows them something they might be more excited by, then they would be more open and ready to explore other films in the "genre", ones that are considered to be of high merit by professors/critics etc. Jumping into certain experimental films is baffling and frustrating without proper previous exposure. There is no precedent to evaluate or understand the experience. The same is true for art. Without history, context and experience, what are the blocks and squares of color to someone used to representational images?
However, Mr. MacDonald, I found it a little difficult to understand this piece as a whole. I see that it is an introduction, but it seemed to switch topics halfway through, from generalizations about common perceptions about Avant-Garde to summaries of historical movements to a meditations on the Lumiere brothers and Muybridge. It seemed to drift and was hard to digest in parts because it drifted from what seemed like a thesis idea. I feel arrogant for calling you out on it, but, like, it's just constructive criticism. You'll do better next time.

To Mr. Camper:

Your list is superfluous. Each of these qualifications are examples of that done so far, and thus could easily and quickly become outmoded when Experimental film does what it does best, break rules. Experimental film, as I'll call it for convenience, should be called film poems or something to do with that, because the divide is basically whether or not there is a narrative. I think film can be catalogued the same way as literature. Narrative film, Poetic film, and Documentaries are analogous to Fiction, Poems, and Essays/Nonfiction. A few qualifications should be made (Pearl Harbor wasn't a documentary) but more or less these classifications make work because they are based on a simple criteria. Does it tell a story? no. Does it depict reality as reality. no. It's a Poetic film!! I can't find anything wrong with my system. If there are films that cross boundaries then these hybrids will be referred to by both, like in literature. What's that? You have a film that has elements of narrative, yet is expressive in a not quite definable way? Perhaps the habitat in which the narrative resides isn't stable and perhaps the film drifts from this and starts directly interacting with the viewer through visuals rather than through character? Well, we'll call it a Poetic Narrative. Bingo. Gold. Sold.
Basically what I'm saying is that all the conventional means of defining film modes define them cultural terms rather than what they are. I understand that when one says "experimental" it could mean anything from eternal sunshine to mothlight, from gummo to empire. These films have little in common except for having nothing to do with the dominant use of the medium. It's confusing to define them along these lines. It's inconsistent. Might as well call it "unusual film".