As
Above, So Below: Competition for US Experimental Film and
Video in the UK
Presented at the Society for Cinema
and Media Studies conference, Chicago, 10 March 2007
The
place of the US feature film in the international market,
and individual national markets, is well known. What has received
less attention is the position of US experimental film and
video in other national contexts. This paper will demonstrate
the continuing centrality of US works to UK experimental film
and video institutions.
From the
late 1960s, exposing US experimental works was the job of
the London Film-Makers' Co-op, sister to the New York Film-Makers'
Co-op. When a commercial distributor/exhibitor attempted to
enter in the early 1970s, LFMC used Co-op solidarity to stop
them getting any films, arguing that such competition (loss
of income and significance) would destroy the LFMC. When the
Arts Council started exhibition and touring schemes in the
mid-1970s, such a boycott could not be organised, even among
UK artists. These schemes quickly absorbed LFMC activities,
from hosting visiting filmmakers to supplying prints to galleries
and art colleges. But the AC's first touring package was of
US artist Stan Brakhage, the most popular and highest earning
artist in LFMC's catalogue. Likewise, US work went in as context
for gallery shows of UK work. When the AC expanded the volume
of this in the early 1980s, one of the first packages was
US video art straight from a show at The Kitchen in New York.
This operation reduced the video artists' distributor, London
Video Arts, to a dispatch agency on contract to the AC. Through
the 1980s, the AC's initially internal film and video touring
unit Film and Video Umbrella organised speaking tours, including
for P Adams Sitney with an US underground film retrospective,
and retrospectives of US makers Andy Warhol, the Kuchar Bros.,
and Maya Deren. In the austere late-80s, LFMC and LVA did
what they could to sabotage FVU's heavily subsidised competition.
In the early 1990s, FVU began to guarantee supply with exclusive
contracts with makers, and the most famous to enter into such
was US video artist Bill Viola.
US experimental
works had attained dominance in the UK before LFMC started
in 1966, and have provided inspiration and financial support
to the UK artists' distributor/exhibitors LFMC and LVA. Thus
the relationship is not simply competitive, the US works are
integral to the UK situation, as are its feature films in
the UK commercial market. The competition between the UK parties
shows this and its longevity, while illuminating the internal
structure of the UK experimental film and video 'market'.
Dr Peter
Thomas
Post Doctoral Research Fellow on the AHRC funded project 'Databasing
Key Documents and Narrative Chronologies of Artists' Film
and Video Distributors in the UK', University of Sunderland
peter.thomas-1@sunderland.ac.uk
|
