Experimental Cinema

Structures, Systems and Strategies

Simon Payne

• Publisher: British Film Institute
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781839026508
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Experimental Cinema examines a range of structures, systems and strategies that film and video artists have developed from the late 1960s to the present. Over the decades, artists have responded to the ever-changing medium of cinema and its technological advances, as well as taking inspiration from painting, sculpture and music.

Simon Payne argues that the evolution of methodical strategies in experimental cinema goes back to the first avant-garde films made a century ago, in the 1920s. He shows how key figures internationally have formed part of this picture since then, but suggests that the most thorough formal exploration of cinema can be credited to a generation of artists that began making films in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s.

Payne analyses the work of numerous influential artists including Peter Gidal, David Hall, Malcolm Le Grice, Annabel Nicolson, Jayne Parker and Guy Sherwin. He discusses recent and lesser-known works as well as canonical films, videos and expanded cinema. He also pays close attention to younger artists including Jenny Baines, Neil Henderson, Jennifer Nightingale and Samantha Rebello.

Experimental Cinema traces a lineage that has defined some of the central preoccupations of artists' film and video, which continue to test our expectations of cinema, television and the moving image.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Three Ss
• After Duchamp: William Raban
• By candlelight: Elemental cinema and flicker
• Constructivism into film: Systems art and Guy Sherwin
• Dark from light: Nick Collins’ films
• Film music: Jayne Parker and John Cage
• Games and challenges in artists’ films and videos
• In search of a sensual philosophy: Malcolm Le Grice
• Knitting patterns in Jennifer Nightingale’s films
• Lengths and lines: Artists’ filmstrips
• Matches: Responses to Annabel Nicolson’s expanded cinema
• Not far at all: Peter Gidal
• Object no.1: Montage in Samantha Rebello’s films
• Primary structures: David Hall’s sculpture of the screen
• Quartet and quadrants: Nicky Hamlyn
• Signals: Teaching, learning and positive feedback
• Tree again: Chris Welsby
• Vide0void: David Larcher and Anthony McCall
• Words: John Smith and Lis Rhodes
• Zeros and ones: Abstract digital cinema
• Conclusion: History and criticism
• Notes
• Index