Undergroundfilm

Underground means in a free movie from the usual commercial constraints path of production and distribution - and thus to a greater freedom of artistic expression. Thus the connection to experimental film and avant-garde film is tight, but not necessarily.

History

A film like Un Chien Andalou ( An Andalusian Dog, 1929) by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí was a provocation pose as an underground film, but was shown in regular cinemas operation and that is why the scandal.

The term underground movie first appeared in 1957 in the essay underground films of American film critic Manny Farber on. Farber used it to be so to refer to directors who had made " anti-art in Hollywood." He contrasted " soldiers Gangster Cowboy directors like Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, William Wellman ," and others with the " less talented directors De Sica and Fred Zinnemann, who still fascinated by the film critics. "

In the late 1950s there was talk of underground film in terms of a small number of independent filmmakers who came first in San Francisco, and New York City and soon in other cities. Known representatives in the U.S. were Stan Brakhage, Bruce Conner, Piero Heliczer, Ken Jacobs, Jonas Mekas, Ron Rice, Barbara Rubin, Jack Smith, George Kuchar and Andy Warhol.

In Europe, originated mainly in the Austrian film with artists such as Kurt Kren, Otto Muehl or Otmar Bauer, a true underground. In France, Jean Genet's 1950 film Un chant d' amour incurred is seen ( A Love Song ) as a precursor to the Underground. In Germany Birgit Hein and Wilhelm Hein have been pioneers of underground film.

In the late 1960s, the movement was " ripened " and some of the protagonists started from the counter-cultural psychedelic connotations and to distance and preferred terms such as avant-garde or experimental film.

In the 1970s and 1980s, but it was still talking to denote the counter-cultural pole of independent cinema from the underground movie. Especially Nick Zedd and other filmmakers of the New York Cinema of Transgression and No Wave Cinema from the late 1970s until the early 1990s relied on the underground film.

In the early 1990s, the legacy of the early Cinema of was taken up transgression in the United States of a new generation of filmmakers who joined " underground film " with transgressive art and no-budget films, films that are the more commercialized versions of independent film, the nouveau riche lender as Miramax Films, and New Line Cinema distributed, as well as the institutionalized experimental film by the great museums had canonized resisted.

This spirit defined the early years of underground film festivals such as the New York Underground Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Toronto's Images Festival, and other zines like Film Threat, and the work of filmmakers like Craig Baldwin, Jon Moritsugu, Carlos Atanes, Sarah Jacobson and Bruce LaBruce.

Since the late 1990s, the term has again become blurred, as the underground festivals stronger now mix with the more established experimental film. If the expression is still used in the USA, it refers to films with a very low budget and a transgressive content, similar to the post-punk music.

Underground Film in contrast to cult films

The term "underground film" is sometimes used as a synonym for cult film. No doubt there are overlaps. The Films of Kenneth Anger could be described as underground, experimental or cult films. A studio film like Heathers, however, may have a cult following, but is certainly no underground film.