Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Cinema

A concise introduction to a complicated and influential genre of cinema.From the technique of creating art on film to the business itself, there's something in this documentary for every level of interest.I've seen my share of experimental films. This documentary introduces the genre while adding something fresh for those already familiar with it.By no means will you see everything there is to see in experimental film. Nor will you get a complete education from it.Experimental film tends to catch people differently. People either fall in love with it or turn away and stick with mainstream story-telling.This documentary gives you the option without making you feel trapped by the awkwardness that is the very nature of avant-garde cinema.Use it as an introduction to the genre for your students or add it to your library and celebrate the very personal interviews it contains.Let this be a seed for the inherent cin·é·aste.

Free Radicals is a great hour and twenty minute film on the history of experimental film by Pip Chodorov. The title "Free Radicals" also comes from the experimental film by Len Lye of the same name. Filmmakers such as Ken Jacobs, Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, and Jonas Mekas share their vision as artists and personal filmmakers on the leading edge of experimental film mostly in the 60's, but this documentary covers a period from the 20's to the present. There aren't that many American avant garde filmmakers that are still living, and this documentary gives a pretty good picture of some of these remarkable artists. Free Radicals is not comprehensive(what hour and twenty minute film could be,) but gives a solid picture of the experimental film movement and its creators, mostly in the 60's when experimental film was blossoming... I give it 4 stars only because some filmmakers were left out--Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, Sidney Peterson, etc. etc. This is not to say that this is not a remarkable film, it is well worth purchasing and viewing many times... Highly recommended.

Excellent overview of experimental cinema. It includes complete copies of a handful of films, including 2 by Len Lye who has no DVDs available in Region 1.

Excellent survey of experimental film makers from 1920s to current.

good interviews of some of the greats. not enough footage of the films.

Luckily my local library owned this, screened it tonight, it's a fine film and a fine intro.to experimental film, of course it's just a basic intro. and cannot cover everyone,my library also stocks the few Kino or whatever avant-garde cinema double or tripleDVD collections, and has a vast film library, but what I still find enormously frustrating,even after having been a film nut for the past 30 or more years, and having evenbeen a film major for a while anyway, in college, is how difficult it mainly is, to track downa lot of these films and/or find them to purchase affordably.I've only been to the Anthology Film Archives in NYC a few times (one time makinga special trip from Queens, for a fresh print of John Frankenheimer's bone-chillingSECONDS, a scarifying experience that I wasn't soon to forget), and it's great, but if one doesn't live in the city andhave tons of free time and money to blow to enjoy places like that, it's still frustrating,and hit or miss in terms of what filmmakers and periods are covered in retrospectives, etc.Some of these people have hit the Web like some of the Maya Deren films, Jonas Mekasnow has at least, some of his primary films out on official commercial DVDs(but, I might add, not particularly cheaply!), but for the most part it's still difficult, in 2015, to find and view most of these films andtrack down the oeuvres of most of these vital and pioneering filmmakers. At leastCriterion has released the key Brakhage anthology DVDs, and indeed my library owns that, too,and thank goodness for that.Anyway, I enjoyed this fascinating documentary but it does tend to skip around a lot,it almost sort of runs out of breath trying to cover so much in a mere 90 minutes,I wouldn't have minded a good solid 2 hours on the subject. there's just so muchto cover, of course, and it's simply impossible in one 90 minute film, as the filmmakerscomment towards the end. I recall over the years, either via PBS TV, or things likethe old Night Flight cable show on USA network, or several years ago, on things likeBrooklyn or Manhattan public access TV shows and such, catching glimpses of late-nightshowings of early experimental film like Leger's Le Ballet Mechanique, Richter, Cocteau,Vertov, a lot of the Dada and Surrealist early films, getting tantalizing glimpses of this whole world of underground andavant-garde film, but this film reminded me how much I still don't know and how manyfilms and filmmakers I still haven't even heard of. One key one I didn't know at allwas Stan Vanderbeek, who passed on, I found out today, in 1984, but clearly,as a major retrospective in Houston, TX a few years ago (2011) attests, was farahead of his time in so many ways, and was one of the primary innovatorsin media/film/computer graphics and animation, etc., and deserves to be morewidely known for his work, although the Houston retrospective exhibit seemsto indicate that such recognition is imminent.Given I was born in 1968 and was but a young monster-moviewatching tyke (barely) when Vanderbeek was teaching film and animation andworking at MIT and such and finally gaining some media interest via PBSand such in the very early 1970s, most of these people including Stan wouldhave and did escape my notice until recently, watching films like this and otherson 1970s-80s underground film in NYC, another of which I recently watched, Céline Danhier'ssuperb Blank City, that covers the early days of John Laurie, Amos Poe, Jim Jarmusch, Lydia Lunch,the No Wave movement in music, film and art, and others, whichwas also well worth the time spent watching. I'm assuming, given the natureof Vanderbeek's computer and animation work, we wouldn't have had fine groundbreaking filmssuch as the WNET PBS 1980 version of Ursual K. LeGuin's utterly surreal SF classicThe Lathe of Heaven, without the innovations of people like Vanderbeekand the MIT gang, and people like famed SF illustrator and experimental/indie filmmakerEd Emshwiller, who I only just recently read worked directly on the video andcomputer graphics effects for The Lathe of Heaven. A night killed by pairingboth Blank City and Free Radicals, I believe, would be a night you could do worse thanfilling with these two obviously symbiotic and vital films.Even with many of the later 70s-80s figures, it's difficult if not impossible to often see or track down much of theirearly works, if they're even available to be seen. I still haven't seen(and don't know that much about) many of the Lettrist films,but Free Radicals gives the barest grounding and intro. to some of its key founders, although I've also studiedand read some books on the movement and the Situationist movement, etc.,mainly the latter by suggestion of being into punk for so many years.In summary, I highly recommend this compelling and tantalizing documentary,as a starting point, but I must confess it's highly frustrating overall (as it musthave been to many of the artists covered herein!) to be given a good groundingonly to find out you cannot readily avail of much of the works in question.I suppose the WWW is changing this, but far too slowly. Places likethe Anthology in NYC are wonderful but they are often only useful for thoseable to take advantage of them locally. What I therefore envision is thatsomeday, we'll have a few sort of indie or avant-garde special YouTubes as it were,that only concentrate on getting streamable (if not downloadable) versionsof many of these films and artists online so students and cineastes world-widecan easily or affordably view a vast archive of these important but quite rare andobscure films. People like Mekas and Brakhage are the exceptions, most ofthese filmmakers will never have DVDs commercially available. Of course,it would probably be a nightmarish undertaking and with hellish copyrightand permissions issues to get past, but it sounds to me like a project worthpursuing, I only wish I had the resources and connections to do it myself.I recall being in early film school and this is before the WWW and DVDs,and being excited that I could even find a copy of Godard's Alphaville at my localvideo store (meanwhile if one was lucky enough to live in NYC orbe going to NYU or whatever, you had things like Kim's Video downtownwhere you could avail of all kinds of underground cinema--now we don't evenhave Kim's extant any longer, so like DEVO predicted, we're regressing, I guess!)to screen for one of my classes, or as suggested viewing:this was in roughly 1988 but good lord, we should've come a lot furtherby now than we have in terms of these radical and early indie pioneersbeing made available given all the technology now available that simplywasn't remotely possible even in 1988!It's nice to see that things like Maya Deren's films are mainly becoming available on DVD now,and such, but even that's only within the past 10 years or less,as far as I know. Knowing that most of these artists never wanted to,or expected, their films to really be commercial or make tons ofmoney, in any case, it would still be nice for them all to find a dedicatedonline virtual home, so they don't get further ripped off, or their estates,since many aren't with us any longer, and then again, maybe somedidn't want their films so commercially available, I don't know.I still suspect that it's a lot easier to get a full film education these days,and there's more available than ever before, but not necessarily cheaply,and this is part of the problem, especially where the avant-garde is concerned.In any case, I greatly enjoyed Free Radicals and wish the filmmakers woulddo a series of like four or five films or even a trilogy, just like it, coveringas much as they can! No extras on the DVD, also a bit disappointing,but the film itself is very well-done and informative.The music soundtrack was cool as well, including great underground NYC avant stuff likeAlbert Ayler, et al. Another name that only the cognoscenti would know, a shame. There's like200 people in all the USA that would pay upwards of $300 for the Ayler box set,or whatever, and the same mainly goes, I suppose, for many of thesepioneering indie filmmakers and multimedia artists. Still, music, painting,sculpture, books, the tangible arts (even of the most avant-garde variety:even Nam June Paik, or Lydia Lunch, or the band SUICIDE have probablyall had an easier time of "making a living" as a non-commercial artist(s) thanany of the artists depicted herein! Which is truly absurd), seem more readily "marketable"than films, even in the 21st Century, as the film explains in detail was thebete noire of many of the earlier filmmakers covered in Free Radicals.Free Radicals is a fine film, even if just barely scratching the surface, and a bit rough 'roundthe edges at times, but as befitting its subject (such as the transitional "rough edits" to blackor scratchy "leader" or negative before bringing us back to the narrative and V.O.'s)which I'm assuming were utterly intentional), in any case, and any film student or cineaste(unless you're a professor or someone that knows the entire movement backwards andforwards) should enjoy this. I don't know if anybody has done a full documentary onJonas Mekas, but that's probably a no-brainer if anybody would take a crack at that.They're showing his Lost, Lost, Lost soon at Museum of the Moving Image in Queens,which I'm hoping to attend, given how rare we all know this type of film and screening is,even in the rarefied film and art worlds of NYC. I know there's a more recent documentaryon Stan Brakhage but I haven't seen this myself, as yet, but shall soon.