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CHAPTER 9
EXPERIMENTAL SCREENS: AVANT-GARDE FILM, VIDEO ART, AND NEW MEDIA
MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS
1. Who considered cinema the most important of the arts for the revolutionaries?
A. Germaine Dulac
B. Dziga Vertov
C. Fernand Léger
2. Which of the following is not a “city symphony” film?
A. Manhatta (1921)
E. All of the options are correct.
3. MTV brought which of these previously experimental techniques into the mainstream?
A. Breaking of continuity rules
B. Nonlinear narratives
4. Which of the following is a type of experimental organization?
A. Associative
B. Abstract
5. Film scholar Tom Gunning suggests that early cinema’s “look at me!” quality continues to shape ongoing film
traditions such as
A. special effects.
B. musical numbers.
6. Which of the following statements about Andy Warhol is NOT accurate?
D. He created his own version of the Hollywood studio system.
E. He produced both Chelsea Girls (1966) and Flesh (1968). The
7. Which of the following is an example of a formalist practice in experimental film?
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A. The use of a stationary medium shot to frame images as flat planes
B. The structural repetition of geometric shapes
8. An example of expanded cinema is
A. Window Water Baby Moving (1959).
B. Serene Velocity (1970).
9. Which of the following statements about surrealism is correct?
A. It is used to express a personal position in film.
10. Third Cinema
A. rejected commercial cinema.
B. rejected “auteur” or art cinema.
FILL–IN-THE-BLANK QUESTIONS
1. A great many experimental films are _____________, that is, concerned with problems of form over issues of
2.
_____________, formal experiments that are also nonrepresentational, use color, shape, and line to create patterns and
rhythms that are purely form-based or abstracted (that is, made more conceptual than concrete) from real actions and
3. _____________ typically emphasize a personal voice or vision through the singularity of the image or through the use
4. While based in documentary in its presentation of information, 1980s _____________ also used experimental
techniques of editing, design elements drawn from advertising and propaganda, and self-conscious voiceover and
5. A term used in both information science and communications as well as the arts, _____________ refers to an
array of technologies including the Internet, digital formats, video game consoles, smartphones, wireless devices, and
SHORT-ANSWER QUESTIONS
(3-4 SENTENCES)
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1. What topics did the underground film movement in New York engage with in the 1960s? Give two examples of
filmmakers and how they deployed documentary and experimental practices.
2. What was the Sony Portapak, and how did electronic video technology spur both activist video and video art?
3. How do films that focus on the material of the film (its grain, sprockets, and journey through a projector past a beam
of light), and follow a particular editing logic or other formal principle of construction, inf orm a wide variety of media
art and challenge the audience’s perceptions?
4. What effect might be created for the film viewer by essay films that blur the boundaries between experimental and
documentary to question the “truth” of documentary?
5. Explain two possible uses of surrealist imagery and narrative logic in animated and live-action films.