HNRS 328-01: Cinema Beyond Film: Expanded Cinema, 1920s - Present

This course is about a large, highly varied, and international body of cinematic art often referred to as “expanded cinema.” The name indicates an “expansion” of cinema beyond the bounds of the traditional materials, forms, and viewing conventions of film into alternative, often quite radical, new forms. In some cases these new forms reconfigure the traditional elements of the film medium significantly, as in the case of film installations; some kinds of expanded cinema even question the need for film at all, suggesting that something can be “cinematic” without being made of film. Some expanded works merge film with other forms, including performance, sculpture, and music. Video, television, holography, laser and light projection, and a variety of other media and forms have been placed under the heading of expanded cinema as well, and recent moving image work by artists in galleries and museums is relevant to the history of expanded cinema, too, and will come into consideration in this course. Though the term “expanded cinema” was first coined in the early sixties and was related to the postmodern, Conceptual and performance art of that period, it has its roots in experiments with camera-less filmmaking, light projection, and multimedia of the earlier generation of modernist artists. Expanded cinema also remains a popular form among contemporary avant-garde filmmakers. This course conceives of expanded cinema quite broadly, considering this entire history and pondering the fluctuating conceptions of “cinema” in the avant-garde (and elsewhere) from the early twenties to the present day.

Term: Spring 2009

Credits: 4

Fulfills: GE Requirement in Arts (A)

Meeting times: 13:30-14:20 MWF; 19:30 or 21:30 Sun (screenings)

Instructor: Jonathan Walley