Experimental Visions: Women & Others

This course examines influential women and non-binary filmmakers who advocate for experimental forms in their moving image work and writing. We will focus primarily on a non-narrative avant-garde and on artists that argue for the importance of form, the embodied and sensual depiction of experience, or a subversion of a normative politics of representation. Beginning with Germaine Dulac, the 1920s feminist surrealist who was an important advocate for the avant-garde, we will look at films and writings by/about some of the major figures including Maya Deren, Joyce Wieland, Barbara Hammer, Chick Strand, Rose Lowder. In the last third of the class we will look at recent makers who might include Cauleen Smith, Hito Steyerl, Ja'Tovia Gary, Dani and Sheila ReStack. We will collectively reflect on the role of the avant-garde in the past and present and ask whether a non-narrative avant-garde can still play an important political and ideological role.