'Experimental Film requires a different kind of spectatorship.' Has this been your experience? [35]

Experimental films are full of strange mixtures of images, situations, words and expressions that may not tell a cohesive story but, in the end, don't have to in order to achieve an emotional goal. This type of film therefore requires the spectator to shift their conventional cinematic expectations to accommodate more radical narrative techniques, themes and meaning construction. 

Un Chien Andalou, the infamous 1929 surrealist short film from Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, attests to this. This film was very odd and also quite deceiving. The deceiving part of this film initially shocked me because it made me think that the man was cutting a woman's eye in half but it was actually an animals eye. This alone shows that not everything is not as it appears and this theme is shown throughout the film. The film also questions gender for example when one of the men is wearing women's clothes, this also shows the auteurs acceptance of cross dressing and transgender.


Chris Marker became known internationally for the short film La Jetée (1962). It tells of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel by using a series of filmed photographs developed as a photomontage of varying pace, with limited narration and sound effects. This film was very cleverly filmed because even though pretty all the film is just still images the shots are very well framed. The lighting of the film is also good because it is mainly dark with a spotlight on certain characters and people. There are also camera tilts and zoom ins and outs which gives the film dynamics and make it seem more familiar and more film like.

Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) is a work that maintains all of the mystery, tranquility, unpredictability, and personal attachment that is ever present within the world of dreams. I did not like this film at all. I felt that it was unnerving because of the human 'hmmmmm'ing soundtrack and also the mirrored person. This makes the film very uneasy to watch. I also felt that the film was very repetitive which made the film very boring.