Encadenamientos con agentes intermediarios de la comercialización

Art cinema is one of the most important concepts (or genres, or mode of production, or ambiguously defined grey area of film production...) in film studies, and its significance stems from post-war European (and other world) cinema. Something new and radical was occurring in many films throughout parts of the world, but many of the films that transformed the way film is dis- cussed and criticized came from Europe. Art cinema has routinely been described as one that is aesthetically challenging and intellectually appealing,

is (typically) non-commercial and narratively ambiguous, and is serious in its treatment of “adult” issues. Moreover, art cinema is characterized by its constant and conflicting relationship with the mainstream film industry, which has helped shaped its status as a viable outlet for alternative forms of film produc- tion and consumption. European art cinema, from Italian Neorealism to the New German Cinema, influenced spectators’ understanding of what cinema is and, more importantly, what it can do. The same idea can be applied to avant- garde film; avant- garde filmmakers are those who ruin expectations by pre- senting alternative forms of representation, requiring a new way of seeing. Similarly, the art cinemas that flourished during the 1960s offered alternative viewpoints on society, culture, politics and real life. Though I am certainly not equating the two, there are similar characteristics between art cinema and avant- garde film. For instance, the terms themselves are flexible and connote different moments in time and also different types of filmmaking practice. Also, art films deliberately positioned themselves as reactionary to mainstream film, much like avant- garde film. Art cinema also works tangentially to mainstream film, often intersecting but never fully merging with it. Like avant- garde films, art films eschew classical narrative storytelling in favor of temporal/spatial dislo- cation, ambiguity, and perhaps metaphoric/symbolic relations. One major — and crucial — difference for the original art films of the late 1950s to 1960s was that they did indeed receive distribution, and sometimes to larger markets. Avant- garde films and their exhibition often remained “underground” at muse- ums, colleges, or private screenings. As Barbara Wilinsky notes, “[The] extent to which art films— as opposed to purely modernist cinema or avant- garde/ exper imental films, which mainly played for private film societies—could offer an alternative to Hollywood cinema was limited by censorship and economic interests.”1_{Art films in this sense welcomed critical attention far more so than}

avant- garde films, which remained “private.” Still, as I will detail later, the more contemporary feature-length avant- garde films that I discuss all have received critical attention, a credit to the changing parameters of film culture and the definitions (as articulated in Part I of this book) of avant- garde cinema that have indeed evolved over time — which, again, does not mean that the films I discuss are received by everyone as avant- garde (but for my purpose, they do). I will reiterate again: I am not equating avant- garde film with art cinema; the two are vastly different. However, in the cultural (and film) climate of the 1960s, there was an increasing desire on both the part of the filmmakers and that of the spectator to discover something new. This idea fueled both art cinema and avant- garde film. Art films have been defined and described in many ways, somewhat similar to how avant- garde films are categorized. Art films are char- acterized, according to Geoffrey Nowell- Smith, by their “superior (or at any rate distinctive) artistic qualities,” their “openness to a variety of experiences and their sexual frankness.”2_{Art films are “challenging and open to multiple}

the primacy of cause and effect in Hollywood films”; and they “foreground the artistry of the auteur and navigate between the subjectivity of the auteur and an aesthetic of realism, resulting in ambiguous causal linkages and motiva- tions.”4_{Finally, in the most straightforward sense, art cinema “describes fea-}

ture-length narrative films at the margins of mainstream cinema, located somewhere between fully experimental films and overtly commercial prod- ucts.”5_{Further distinctions (and overlaps) of clarity come in extended enun-}

ciations of “art cinema” as a specific category (or genre) with noticeable features. Angela Ndalianis writes:

Art cinema adopts a looser narrative form that breaks up linearity and causality through the use of techniques such as ellipsis (which creates narrative gaps); “dead time” (action that has little or no effect on narrative progression); episodic sequences paralleled by drifting, aimless protagonists; and an open- ended structure. Influenced by modernist practices, art cinema directors prioritize style and cinematic image over narrative exposition, and are frequently associated with notions of “artistic vision.”6

Many feature-length avant- garde films have similar qualities. Unlike the known short avant- garde films of the canon of experimental cinema, the longer films tend to have a more recognizable structure.

A final clarification and description of art cinema comes from (or contin- ues with) Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover, who suggest:

Typical (but not necessary) features [of art cinema] include foreign production, overt engagement of the aesthetic, unrestrained formalism, and a mode of narration that is pleasurable but loosened from classical structures and distanced from its rep- resentations. By classical standards, the art film might be seen as too low or excessive in its visual style, use of color, or characterization.7

Many of the avant- garde features I will describe have similar traits; they are concerned with film’s formal characteristics and openly display them; they have a distinct visual style; they have “loose” narratives; and they offer unique per- spectives of representative reality. I would add, too, a fundamental aspect of avant- garde cinema in its relation to the spectator. Spectators do have to “work” while watching an avant- garde film. But they also have to be aware of what it

does, of what it makes appear.

If there are indeed some correlations or corresponding traits between avant- garde film and art cinema, then it shows how two strands of cinema can maintain an oppositional status; however, the avant- garde remains in the outer limits, unlike art cinema. More recently, art cinema has become recognizable through festivals and critical assessments, which, as mentioned, directly relates to my observations of the feature-length avant- garde film: Most of these films are shown in art theaters or at festivals, and receive attention based on the director’s name or the prestige bestowed upon the films by critics. Here is where I believe the films I will devote attention to in Chapter 8 fall: as both avant- garde feature films and as art films. But I will focus on their inherent qualities as

avant- garde or experimental films, and not necessarily on their status as art films.