Experimental current films

We've been asked in last week's lecture what films we've seen that are different from a production and composition point of view, that are current. The discussion and task started from the fact that all the experimental films we've seen in the past weeks have been old, and the argument was that there are no new films that are as revolutionary and different as the we've been shown as examples. This is why the task to think about a current film came up.

Interestingly enough but not surprisingly, everyone's first reaction was to think about films that were 'diferent' from the narrative point of view, but not production.

I struggled to think about a film, and finally I thought about Timecode (2000) where there are 4 stories happening on the screen at the same time. After a while I remembered a film I saw few weeks back at Zipangu Film Festival in London, where I went with the East Asian Film Society to cover the opening night of the fest. We watched one of the films, KenZeOn which is an experimental documentary that looks at sound in a Japanese community. The film wasn't scripted or planned too much, the two producers and the camera man were led by the friends they made in the community and produced something rather beautiful. Unfortunately the movie trailer doesn't show too much of the experimental side of the video but it still gives an idea about the theme and concept.

The film is experimental in the way that they played around with time, they used time freeze and some of the footage is slowed down, but also the sound as it is the main subject of the film; they recorded a lot of the background sound and music whilst travelling and added it to the footage as they felt appropriate. There was a Q&A session at the end of the film with the two producers, and they stated that they didn't plan anything, and they added the sound as they were editing, but didn't want to alter the feel of the experience.

After a bit of research I found few more. One I really liked was The rules of Attraction (2002) which is very experimental as it uses a lot of split screen, plays with time (fast forward, backwards, time freeze) and has a distinct rhythm that varies according to the story.

Also Requiem of a Dream (2000) is produced in a similar way, having all the components..screen space, time, rhythm to give the feeling of a dream.