Teaching Avant-Garde Film: Notes Towards Practice

Abstract

It may be helpful to begin with a definition of a central term and an explanation of the structure of this article. I use ‘avant-garde’ to refer to that body of work which engages with questions of film language and the relationship of film-maker and spectator to film, but which is also produced in opposition to the dominant system of production, distribution and exhibition and is therefore part of independent cinema. This is a limited and debateable usage, but my argument here is that the changes in conditions of production implied by the practice of independent cinema are important to the activity of thinking through the social practice of the avant-garde. These notes are part of a process of reflection upon three years’ experience of teaching avant-garde and independent cinema to mixed groups of adults on the British Film Institute (BFI) University of London Extra-Mural course in Film Studies from 1976 to 1979. In one sense they are ‘thoughts after the event’, the rationalisation of a process of testing and transforming positions on ‘the avant-garde’ and ‘teaching’ which were not clearly formulated in the first place. This is an opportunity to hesitate, to reassess that work and its underlying assumptions in the light of certain historical changes over the past five years or so which make reassessment important.

Screen Education, no. 32/33, Autumn/Winter 1979/80.