Guest post by Joan Hawkins, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Indiana University. Valie Export (1940-) is a radical feminist Austrian artist and filmmaker. How radical? Radical enough to take a popular brand of cigarettes, Export, as her last name. She liked the design of the cigarettes, she told Gary Indiana, and she… Read more »
Guest post by Joan Hawkins, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Indiana University. The immediate post-World War II period saw an explosion of formal experimentation across the American art scene. In music, there was jazz, bop, be-bop, and rock ‘n’ roll. Classical music saw the rise of John Cage and experiments that would… Read more »
Though certain filmmakers have been making films for personal reasons, rather than institutional or financial ones, since the days of silent cinema, this tendency toward authorial independence only began to coalesce into a bonafide artistic movement in the United States during the 1940s – the decade in which American filmmakers like Maya Deren and Kenneth… Read more »
If you’ve seen a film by Terry Gilliam, Wes Anderson, or Tim Burton, you’ve likely seen the influence of Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman. An artistic genius who often combined live action and animation to spellbinding effect, Zeman worked as an animator and director from the 1940s up until his death in 1989. I first discovered… Read more »
Jon Jost has directed dozens of films over an approximately 50-year career. His films span documentary, narrative, experimental, and personal essay, often existing in the spaces between genres, and he has shot a range of formats. Jost is known for his commitment to true independence, choosing to work small and, along with that, focus his… Read more »
Andy Warhol’s films are infamous for extremely long takes, static shots, and excessive lengths. Though not all his movies fit that mold perfectly, films like Empire (1965) are formative for how audiences and critics have conceived his cinematic works. In this video essay, I look at Warhol’s relationship to time, suggesting that his cultivation of boredom… Read more »