Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 7 No. 49, December 2003
Liz Wells
Reflections on Experimental Film: _The Undercut Reader_
_The Undercut
Reader_ Edited by Nina Danino and
Michael Maziere London: Wallflower
Press,
2003 ISBN
1-903364-47-7 277 pp. 'The often metaphoric
thinking (in texts and interviews) throws up ideas in
profusion -- both new thought and also new non-linear modes
of thought production. These are unrecognisable as
sufficiently sophisticated models of understanding in purely
academic terms. Producing new connections which transcend
old categories its oblique lines of approach seem unrigorous
as they move beyond constraining forms of logic.'
(200) Rod Stoneman thus opens a
critical discussion of Godard's forms of thought, as
expressed through his films, which Stoneman characterises as
'quasi-theoretical' and welcomes as 'metaphoric thinking';
but the statement might equally characterise _Undercut_ at
its best. Key features of the magazine included: eclecticism
of style and thematic content; focus on medium, materials,
and craft method; diversity of debates; interviews with
practitioners; and a refusal of critical fashionability, for
example, the focus on postmodernism which hijacked a number
of other magazines and journals of the 1980s. Publication of _The
Undercut Reader_, which includes many significant articles
and images, is very welcome. It reflects a resurgence of
interest in film from that period and coincides with a
year-long programme of artist's film in Britain at Tate
Modern. However, I have found this review difficult, as, for
whatever reasons, the editing leaves much to be desired.
_Undercut_ was the magazine of the London Film-Makers Co-op;
it ran to 19 issues (of which 4 were double issues)
published variously from 1981 to 1989. That this was a
period of immense cultural struggle and change in Britain
was reflected in the magazine, although this is not
particularly remarked in the Introduction to this Reader.
The magazine functioned as a forum for debate, and as such a
light editorial touch was appropriate. But retrospective
selection and collation of material needs a clear sense and
statement of purpose. There is no explanation of criteria by
which pieces have been selected; two of the essays are
prefaced by comments from their authors, but the others are
not; there are no mini-biographies of authors and no
indication of where they might be found now; more
particularly, there is no general filmography, index, or
attempt to indicate sources of materials referenced. All of
this limits the usefulness of the book especially for those
who might wish to reference it for teaching students who may
not have seen films and other materials under
discussion. So why publish this
selection of essays, interviews and photoworks? And why now?
At one level, the collection summarises something of the
tone and parameters of a magazine which, like many from that
period, is now difficult to find (except at the British Film
Institute, and a number of arts institutes and university
libraries). The opening section of the Reader consists of
five newly-commissioned brief essays whose collective
function is to place _Undercut_ both in its era, and in
relation to current issues, debates, and circumstances. In
respect of the latter, all are somewhat coy! (Perhaps not
surprisingly given the recent history of LFMC, LVA and The
Lux Cinema!) But they are too brief to reflect in any detail
or depth on debates and practices of the 1980s. The main
part of the Reader consists of reprinted essays, interviews,
and photo-texts, the great majority of which have not been
re-annotated or amended in any way (other than layout). It
is organised in sections: 'Avant-Garde Theory', 'Close-Up on
Artists' (which will prove useful for anyone researching
individual oeuvres), 'Cultural Identities', 'Experimental
Animation', 'Independent Cinema', 'Surveys', and 'Video
Art'. Inevitably such titles feel like an attempt to contain
that which overspills borders. For example, some of 'theory'
is comment or criticism, and 'close up' inevitably crosses
over with theory and criticism as artists make critical
assumptions, implicitly or explicitly, when discussing their
work or the work of others. Likewise, whilst 'Cultural
Identities' re-publishes proceedings from an event held at
the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, questions of
identity, albeit relating more to gender than to ethnicity,
are variously woven throughout. But was it ever else? The
Reader ends with a full list of issues and contents which,
although interesting and potentially useful for anyone who
wants to burrow back, reinforces questions as to criteria
for inclusion/exclusion. What, I wonder, happened to other
contributors listed in the summary of authors and topics?
The question is not merely rhetorical. The magazine's
history is now marked in a Reader in which a particular
selection of essays is montaged and contextualised, in
effect becoming an orthodoxy; we won't take this as *the*
history -- we are all too skeptical for that -- but, as the
most immediate record, somehow authority will seep to it.
Although several key photoworks from the period are included
(by photographers as diverse as Kennard, Knorr, Mahr, Paley,
Spence), the magazine front cover is not illustrated in the
Reader; yet another image fades! In 1979 the Arts Council
mounted a show at the Hayward Gallery, London, on _Film as
Film: Formal Experiment in Film, 1910-1975_ which, through
emphasising earlier avant-garde experiments in the nature
and potential of the medium, contributed to encouraging a
materialist focus. This exhibition arguably acted as a key
influence for those who set up _Undercut_, if only through
determining which materials from earlier periods were seen
and proposing how they might be located conceptually.
Phillip Drummond's definitional discussion of 'Notions of
Avant-Garde Cinema', with which this exhibition catalogue
opened, was indicative. He asserted a binary opposition
between dominant cinema and the avant-garde, noting
difference of economic and social base, opposition to the
classic realist text, concern with form and narrativity, and
semiotic exploration of the image no longer anchored through
narrative. The exhibition thus pointed to a relation between
earlier modernist experiments of the 1920s and 1930s, and
films which reflected the influence of structuralism in the
1960s/70s. At the time, this seemed in many ways an
ill-matched combination since the pleasure of reveling in
the image was often undermined by the dry academicism of the
formal. But with hindsight, what
seems more problematic was the use of binaries as critical
method. Whilst clear oppositions help establish starting
points (categories onto which broader and more complex
pictures could be mapped) they no longer (and never did)
seem adequate to interrogation of actual cultural processes.
Peter Wollen's often cited essay on the two avant-gardes --
wherein formalist, and political, filmmaking are conceived
of as distinct groups with ideological address as the key
distinguishing characteristic -- was never a useful vehicle
for comprehending the more messy actuality of what
filmmakers actually made. The late 1970s feminist challenge
re-articulated debates relating to aesthetics, politics and
the politics of representation, further complicating an
already complex picture. In this context, the Hayward
exhibition can be seen as a claim for a particular history
and legacy within avant-gardism, one which kept
experimentation firmly within the harbour of formalism
rather than risking more turbulent post-modern or political
winds of change. The 1970s and 1980s
witnessed many key developments in film culture. The term
'independent' filmmaker dates from that time; a term that
was always intended to reference independence of thought and
creative challenge, rather than economic independence. For
some filmmakers the relation between politics and aesthetics
was central. For instance, Peter Gidal's book _Materialist
Film_ (1989) was introduced thus: 'The political positioning
of the viewer is crucial . . . as is the knowledge that
representation is real, is material, is politics and
ideology, ideology the politics of meanings. Without a
theory and practice of radically materialist experimental
film, cinema would endlessly be the 'natural' reproduction
of capitalist and patriarchal forms.' [1] That was only fourteen
years ago, but the statement seems curiously outdated now,
most particularly in reflecting early semiotic notions of
the viewer 'positioned' by the text, or by political
discourses. The language is that of post-1968, but the
aspiration has as much in common with aspects of the
avant-garde of the 1920s as with current modes and
preoccupations, concerns which, arguably, relate more to
consumerism and spectacle and are more likely to deploy
irony, rather than deconstruction, as a critical tactic. It
is interesting to note that, in a recent article published
to introduce the current season of artists' films in Britain
at Tate Modern, Gidal's comments are similar but
modified: 'The notion of the viewer
as inseparable from the viewed -- the act itself as an
active viewing rather than a voyeuristic consumption --
separates such work (artists' film) both practically as well
as theoretically and philosophically from so much work made
then and the work often made now by non-film artists
(artists who are not film-makers).' [2] Here the viewer is
conceptualised as actively engaging within discourses. His
comment on the distinction between film, which for him
involves programming and projection, and work made for
gallery contexts is also key (I shall return to
this). The _Undercut_ collection
can be evaluated as symptomatic of such (then contemporary)
preoccupations. One thing that emerges clearly from the
various essays and interviews is a focus on film as film, on
the materiality of the image, on ways in which a medium
contributes to constructing content, and on the production
process. As Vanda Carter comments, introducing a discussion
of animation, individual style is founded in the
relationship between filmmaker, equipment, medium, and
material (economic) circumstances. This very much reflects
the concerns of the London Film-Makers Co-op at the time,
which, despite the broader intellectual currencies of the
era, might be viewed as 'late modern' avant-gardist (rather
than postmodern). Individual contributions to _Undercut_
gain resonance when we remember this shifting historical
context, as they become situated as contributions within a
multi-layered dialogue (within which gender, and
personality, played a part alongside aesthetics and
politics). The magazine was London-based, and, as with many
such initiatives, hovers between the parochialism of a
particular group (albeit one within which there were many
strands and interest-groups), and the (unearned) sense of
authority associated with its London (capital city) base.
For instance, much is made of the significance of
structuralist film in its early days, but it is London
filmmakers who are referenced, not those based in other
parts of Britain. It is also two prominent London-based
writers, Michael O'Pray and Malcolm Le Grice, who take the
opportunity to briefly preface and comment on their original
essays -- although this may reflect the ease with which they
can be traced now, and their desire, as academics, to locate
and contextualise their work. If more of the writers had
taken this opportunity (or been offered it?) an interesting
meta-dialogue might have emerged. That said, Malcolm Le
Grice's essay is one of three in the 'Avant-Garde Theory'
section which remain refreshing and thought provoking,
especially when related to current debates in digital
aesthetics. Noting the limits of Metz's psycho-structural
focus on the language of narrative (fiction) cinema and
spectator identification processes, he argues that awareness
of the materiality of film, of montage, and of the mechanics
of the camera can operate to effect critical distance
allowing the spectator to produce their own symbolic
relationship to the film text. Michael O'Pray likewise
tackles the limitations of theoretical models grounded in
analysis of the mainstream by asking whether a
psychoanalytic account of aesthetics, which is applicable to
the avant-garde, is possible. What does it mean to respond
to a film in terms of 'beauty'? (He cites Michael Snow's
_Wavelength_ as a possible example). In the third essay, D.
N. Rodowick suggests that, if there *are* two avant-gardes,
what they have in common is a relationship to textual theory
which is determining, in that experimental strategies are
formulated responsively. Noting then contemporary tendencies
in the avant-garde, he questions what is possible in terms
of theorising the experimental, refusing any notion that the
avant-garde, by definition, transcends or refuses
theoretical work. Looking back, one of the
most striking features of the era was the then radical
separation between film, video, and gallery arts, with video
at that time seen by many as more related to television than
to cinema or gallery exhibition. Yet experimental film was
arguably even more disconnected from the art world than
early video. In this respect it is distinct from the earlier
avant-garde previously referenced, wherein, for instance,
Man Ray or Moholy-Nagy moved between media (film, painting,
photography). With hindsight it seems particularly odd that,
whilst conceptual art, with its emphasis on ideas and visual
language (and, to some extent, everyday experience as
subject-matter) had challenged abstract expressionism in the
gallery, film remained separate, caught up in itself (in
this British history at any rate). Yet,
structural-materialist film, with its purposeful exploration
of visual language, montage, and rhythm, had parallels in
the gallery; for instance, the 'art and language' group
(late 1960s/early 1970s). John Roberts comments that might
equally characterise the theoretical work of many filmmakers
of the era: 'It makes little sense to
talk about conceptual art as artists doing theory-as-art, as
if conceptual art had the theory in place which they then
designated as art. The theory took on a prominence because
that is what artists necessarily had to do -- fitfully,
pathologically even -- in order to clear away a workable
space for practice.' [3] Of course the key material
difference lies in the time-based nature of film and video.
Film and video inherently involve a series of images
(usually also sounds) founded, as Deleuze suggests, in an
inter-relation of time and movement. The distinction between
film, video, and installation stemmed more from different
contexts and conventions of exhibition (screenings vs
installation; seated in the dark vs standing in the
semi-light, etc.) than from ontological properties. Julia
Knight offers some comment on this in her new essay (in the
opening section of the Reader), reminding us of the material
and time-based characteristics that video art shared with
film -- as well as those which differentiate each medium --
and suggesting that by the end of the 1980s the distinction
between the two had come to seem less important, as
questions of accessibility, use, and context became a
primary factor. In his new essay, Barry Schwabsky in effect
extends this, pointing to a number of now contemporary
artists variously in 'cross-over' positions between gallery
and narrative film practices, and suggests that this is a
good time to examine the links, if not, inter-relation,
between the two rather separate worlds. Yes, this may be a
good moment, but regrettably this collection, constrained by
drawing exclusively on _Undercut_, cannot tackle
this. I first looked at _The
Undercut Reader_ while sitting on a train in Scandinavia,
(re)reading articles and reflecting upon this era in
experimental film and video, having just attended two
Masters fine art degree show openings in Oslo. Both included
a significant number of digital video installations in
genres ranging from documentary to experimental, and styles
encompassing humour and pastiche (including a
dis-articulated body presented as a three-small-screen
re-interpretation of the eyes and lipstick mouth which -- to
someone of my generation -- seemed derived from Warhol's
multiple 'Monroe'). In one essay, Michael O'Pray notes that
the orthodox postgraduate film study programme in the 1980s
was at the Polytechnic of Central London (now the University
of Westminster). Film studies, and media arts courses, have
since proliferated; and time-based media now have secure
footing in the gallery. I would be delighted to screen Jean
Matthee's _Monroe_ for students -- if only to find out how
it now resonates, given recent experiments in digital art.
To expect underground or experimental cinema to be easily
accessed is a contradiction in terms; and films disappear
from view. Nonetheless, the value of _The Undercut Reader_
ought to lie, in part, in its ability to open up history for
those who were not there to enjoy the films, the debates,
the personality clashes, and the institutional politics,
first time round. A clearer editorial line would have
contributed to positioning debates; a list of resources,
archives, or of contributor biographies might have helped
access materials. Such practical considerations do not in
themselves undermine the validity of the collection, as a
historical documentation, but they do limit its contemporary
purchase. University of Plymouth,
England Notes 1. Peter Gidal,
_Materialist Film_, p. xiii. 2. Peter Gidal, 'Time
Regained (Sort Of)', p. 32. 3. John Roberts,
'Photography, Iconophobia and the Ruins of Conceptual Art'
in Roberts, ed., _The Impossible Document_, pp.
11-12. Bibliography Gilles Deleuze, _Cinema 1:
The Movement-Image_ (1983), trans. Hugh Tomlinson and
Barbara Habberjam (London: Athlone Press, 1992). Gilles Deleuze, _Cinema 2:
The Time-Image_ (1985), trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert
Galeta (London: Athlone Press, 1989). Philip Drummond, ed.,
_Film as Film: Formal Experiment in Film, 1910-1975_
(London: The Arts Council of Great Britain,
1979). Peter Gidal, _Materialist
Film_ (London: Routledge, 1989) Peter Gidal, 'Time
Regained (Sort Of)', _Tate_, July/Aug 2003. John Roberts, ed., _The
Impossible Document: Photography and Conceptual Art in
Britain 1966-1976_ (London: Camerawords, 1997). Peter Wollen, 'The Two
Avant-Gardes', _Studio International_, vol. 190 no. 978,
1975; reprinted in Peter Wollen _Readings and Writings_
(London: Verso, 1982). Copyright ©
Film-Philosophy 2003 Liz Wells, 'Reflections on
Experimental Film: _The Undercut Reader_',
_Film-Philosophy_, vol. 7 no. 49, December 2003
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol7-2003/n49wells>. Join the _Film-Philosophy_
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