IFCO's TRIM BIN: Discussions on Contemporary Celluloid Practices

“EXPERIMENTAL CINEMATIC EXPRESSION: TO BE OR NOT TO BE NARRATIVE”

 What If? by Irina Lyubchenko

What does the word “experimental” mean? To me, an experimental approach in film is similar to an experimental approach in science. The difference is that there is no need to prove or disprove any hypothesis or agenda. Or, I guess, the hypothesis in experimental film is that there is no agenda. Genre films employ strategies that are traditionally used in telling a story; Love triangle, for example, has often served as a structural buttress for romantic drama films.   Placing characters in scary settings from which they can’t get out creates a sense of the unfolding doom and is a common background in suspense/thriller/horror type films. Themes of drugs and alcoholism are almost a requirement for a classic drama story. Genre films aim at a particular part of the human brain, a certain neurotransmitter, such as adrenaline, responsible for feelings of fear, or dopamine, the chemical of love. For instance, horror films attempt to scare us; a detective story – puzzles and, melodramas – play a sort of tug of war with our hearts and minds. These genres all include some form of explanation; whereas as to me – to experiment is not knowing the outcome of the experiment ahead of a time; not making any attempts at manipulating the viewer’s reaction.  To experiment is to ask the question, “What if?”

So, could or should an experimental film be narrative? If being narrative means telling a story, then aren’t all good films, experimental or not, narrative? Story means experience. Some stories are born to be told with words, some with pictures. Traditional narration in film cannot live without the use of words; it heavily relies on logos; words serve as tools of persuasion and reasoning. It seems to me that the more the structure of the visual experience is detached from the sign systems that are used in daily life, the more experimental it becomes; the more difficult it is to re-tell the film’s events if asked what the film is about. However, I would argue, the story is still there, the narration is still taking place since a new and unusual experience is being shared with the viewer. I believe this experience to be more subjective and personal since it comes from a place where words are not necessary, and cannot penetrate the psyche of the observer.

Music + Editing = Narrative by Stephanie Conkie

Experimental films are like an improvisation of music: unique, spontaneous, but still require an educated skill. To say there is no narrative, agenda or set plan to experimental films is like saying there is no purpose in artistic audio or visual expression.  

It would be easy to rule out the experimental when discussing broad and mainstream films as the prototypical way of expressing narrative and set cinematic storytelling techniques. However, what we fail to recognize are the number of other approaches to storytelling that experimental filmmakers use in their films. 

For this approach I would like to suggest that narrative could be found in experimental films, through the expression of music that accompanies the image. 

Would it be wrong to state that a number of experimental films depict what music looks like, if it were an image? 

Take for instance Norman McLaren’s short film Begone Dull Care (1949). An example of an early animation film, it can also be seen as experimental for the music that accompanies the image, which consists of coloured and scratched celluloid. 

As a graduate student and teaching assistant in the film studies program at Carleton University, a screening of Begone Dull Care in a first year film course proved that music could depict narrative in experimental films. 

Upon completion of the film, a student replied to me, “That short film, that is what jazz looks like”. Having no prior knowledge of the film the student was able to find the purpose of the film without ever knowing that Norman McLaren was doing just that, creating a visual representation of Oscar Peterson’s jazz music. Therefore, it was the music that appealed to this student, the process in which he made a connection to the abstract images on screen and the story they were trying to tell. 

In Begone Dull Care and other experimental films it is the composition that determines the exact images as they appear on screen, through a rhythmic editing process. 

Therefore, would it be wrong to state that the tone and rhythmic impulses the audience hears determine what is seen on screen? 

Rhythmic editing, a process that is often attributed to experimental filmmaking tends to downplay temporal and spatial relations, which often serve as pillars in continuity editing and provide signs of a narrative. However, there is still a narrative through the images and the rhythmic way they are shown on screen. 

The majority of film viewers who are only familiar with continuity editing may automatically see experimental films as abstract and suggest that there is no narrative. However, instead experimental films ask more from its viewers, to dig deeper. Therefore, I am suggesting that experimental films contain a narrative, whether through music, rhythmic editing or projected images, the challenge is to look beyond the surface of the film and find a story for yourself. 

Like this writer, who tends to prefer open ended conclusions to fiction filmmaking, the narrative in experimental films are often always open ended, and allow the individual viewer to find meaning in a variety of different ways.