'One state soultion' is a game looking at Israel's occupation of Palestine. A game using archival videos and animations, I never thought it fell under the genre of experimental work.
Looking at film, even while making one, its always better when you allow the subject to choose you rather than choosing one. However, questioning one's connection to the subject matter consistently re-enforces oneself and one's point of view be it a film maker or a script writer or cinematographer for that matter.
Experimental films are ones that break all laws of form, structure and medium. They however may not be very popular in the mainstream due to people being forced to view films through a narrow minded window, a cult of that nature develops and completely shuts the room for open minded viewing. Its quite similar to the way people are controlled in authoritarian, totalitarian, dictatorial regimes. Experimental films act like a voice breaking out wanting to be heard. However this should not serve as an excuse for a film that lacks skill, say poor cinematography.
Most experimental films are highly subjective. For example, in La Jatee by Chris Marker, still shots or photographs with montage was a driving force of the narrative. Destruction during the war was shown through cross dissolving transitions. Most of these images did not speak for themselves except in very specific cases such as the protagonist getting very close to his family. A mood of fear was evoked with eerie sounds in the background such as voices and heart beats.
A film I consider truly vivid and which hits the viewer directly is Stan Brakhage's The act of seeing with one's own eyes which include grotesque, bizarre and perhaps disgusting shots of human autopsies carried out. However Brakhage maintains some level of ethics and morality by not showing the faces of the humans in the film. Every chaos has an order and I believe (so far) it is important to have some kind of order.
Experimental films undoubtedly lead the film maker to explore altered states of mind. While some films like Un Chien Andalou are vividly surreal, some like The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie are subtle.
As we were watching these, in parallel, we worked on our experimental film Dr Philip - The Art Of Lying. We tried maintaining an order centered around the theme of 'lies'. Having tried to work with an associational form, which included having a group of images and sound which would contrast with another group. We wanted the viewer to interpret it strong and forceful which would make it objective but ended up disappointing ourselves. Associational form puts demands on the viewer, yet makes it subjective. One needs a striking, original and puzzling juxtaposition. Koyaaniqatsi would be a good example.
Overall, I've found experimental films to be highly unorthodox which opens up a whole world to explore not only the content, but even language, point of view and question ethics as well as questioning ourselves.
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