New American Cinema
Related: American cinema - film - Experimental Film
Definition
The film society and self-financing model continued over the next couple of decades, but by the early 1960s, a different energy began being felt among the American avant-garde filmmakers. Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man exemplified a shift from personal confessional to abstraction. Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising was an inverted musical of sorts and a camp commentary on Hollywood mythology. Jack Smith and Andy Warhol pushed further toward camp minimalism. By now, American experimental film and the avant-garde of the visual arts (centered in New York) had aligned themselves... --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_film#The_New_American_Cinema [Nov 2005]
The very concept of “New American Cinema” can be confusing. What is referred to as New American Cinema coincides with the New European Waves in time (the 60s), but it also indicates the initial point of would later be called Underground Cinema. New American Cinema or New Hollywood, was also that of the “Golden Age”, from 1967 to 1976, the era in which the gates of the studios opened to let barbarians in, thus favouring a whole generational and aesthetical revolution. Nevertheless, this was a Cinema produced within the industry: the equivalent of New European Cinema would perhaps be the Independent Cinema, but this movement surfaced later, during the first half of the 80s. On the other hand, the influence and the importance of American experimental and documentary cinema also suggest the integration of these two “genres”, which are essentially outside of the industry, within it. --http://www.gijonfilmfestival.com/index.php?lang=2&id=12¬i=2 [Oct 2004]
It was natural that film in the 1960s would reflect that decade's tremendous social and cultural upheaval. The same audiences that were rejecting the social status quo (racial segregation, sexual repression) were also demanding that movies incorporate new forms of expression to parallel those being created in painting (abstract expressionism, Pop art) and literature (the Beats). --http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue02/features/60sindie.htm [Aug 2004]
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