The 1970s Project

The focus of this paper will be in discussing an area of avant-garde filmmaking which was prevalent in the 1960's & 1970s's, namely 'Structural/Materialist' film. The intention is to question, as the title suggests: where did it end? This is to be considered in terms of definition: what exactly defines a film as 'structural/materialist' and what types of films are encompassed in this definition? Films produced at the London Filmmakers Co-operative (LFMC) will be the main area of consideration, although the influence on other individuals and collectives will also be taken into account. A brief history related to the American theoretical context and influence on British structural/materialist film is discussed, specifically in relation to P. Adams Sitney's influential 1969 essay: 'Structural film'. The impact of key films by Andy Warhol and Michael Snow are mentioned as well as American influence on the setting up of the LFMC.

Structural/materialist films were often made to explicitly counter the dominant Hollywood mode of production. Filmmaking was broken down into its significant component parts and areas of investigation: some, like Peter Gidal, incredibly austere in reaction to Hollywood convention and others dealing rather more tangentially with modes of 'structural/materialist' production. This type of filmmaking was approached from as diverse a range of perspectives or subject matter as, for example: anti-illusion; material; mathematical; landscape; games; systematic; procedural; political or structural. Presented here to raise the question: structural/materialist film: where did it end? are a diverse range of examples by Peter Gidal, Malcolm Le Grice, William Raban, Guy Sherwin, Chris Welsby, Anthony McCall, Annabel Nicolson, the Berwick Street Collective, Peter Greenaway and David Crosswaite.