What is an underground movie?

Underground cinema (underground cinema)

Underground film appeared in the United States in the late 1950s. It was a secret movement aimed at showing experimental films made by individuals. Soon, the word was used to refer to all experimental films in the United States and western Europe.

From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, the new york Police Department repeatedly intervened in a film archive dedicated to showing experimental films, because there were short films showing obscene content and brazenly described forbidden themes such as sex, homosexuality, transvestite, erotic dancing and decadent lifestyle. On one occasion, the organizer of this screening was arrested. What is the leader of "American New Film Group"? Mecas. As a result, the production and screening activities of such experimental films have become more and more underground, hence the name.

The early representative of the underground film movement was Jack? Xinmi city (burning creatures, 1963, etc. ) and Andy? Varhol (Kiss, 1963, etc. ) In their films, it is naked sexual description and unabashed nihilism that attract people's attention, rather than innovation in performance skills. As Jonas Mekas published in 1967, "Where are we-underground? -The article "New American Movies" declared: "We said to ourselves: We don't know what people are or what movies are. Therefore, we should be completely open. We will move in any direction ... we are the masters of everything. "Since the mid-1960s, more and more experimental film directors with different creative tendencies have joined the ranks of underground films, clearly proposing that films should become a modernist art. Although these individual filmmakers have different styles and compete for originality, they have two common characteristics: First, they use 18mm film without exception as a symbol opposite to commercial films; The other is to continue to tend to be sexual in subject matter. Taylor pointed out: "The history of underground movies begins with the assertion that one of the most important functions of film cameras should not be forgotten, that is, going deep into those taboo areas, which are too private, too shocking and too immoral for photographic reproduction. "

Since the mid-1960s, underground film movement has also appeared in western European countries, especially in West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain. The main tendency of underground films in western Europe is to shoot abstract films of structuralism, and the main representative figures are Malcolm? Le? Grace and Peter? Godel and Chengerna in West Germany? Nekes and Austrian Peter? Koppel card, etc.