Marga van Mechelen: Dutch Experimental Film

Description

Dutch experimental film has a long history, that goes back to the twenties and thirties when the Filmliga was founded and Joris Ivens created an international network with Russian, German and French filmmakers. Social issues approached from a leftist point of view as well as typical Dutch phenomena, but also the modernist style characterizes these early developments. They summarize in a way an important part of the later traditions as well: documentary devices, engaged subject matter and a modern language. In addition to that, the influence of the neo-avant-gardes in the visual arts was important for the development of Dutch experimental film from the late fifties onwards. In the sixties both traditions came together in an enlarging of things in Dutch daily life and a ridiculization of existing formats and habits of television culture in particular. Dutch experimental films of artists with a background in film, photography or the visual arts is in fact not a device in its own right, but an in-betweenness of existing devices and at the same time a critique of these devices.

Lecturer