Chapter
2
Film Provenances
of Exploding Cinema
I now want
to trace the cinematic precedents of Exploding cinema, but at the same time to
problematise any attempt to understand Exploding Cinema through the framework
provided by normative film history. Exploding Cinema relates more closely to a
history of 'underground film', which must itself be understood in relation to
wider counter cultural traditions. Even then we need to further extend the
frame of reference beyond literary discourses. Exploding Cinema seems to relate
to fields of 'amateur' and 'oral' culture much more than some of its precedents
in underground film.
An Underground
is by definition outside of and in opposition to a mainstream or dominant
culture. This mainstream is briefly defined before I look more closely at
the resonance of early film to the Exploding Cinema events. I then move on
to the Post WWII underground film culture in the USA describing the relevant
features and indicating how this counter culture crosses the Atlantic to Britain
in the mid-Sixties. The effects of this counter culture, which persisted through
the Eighties, are sketched. This leads onto an immediate precursor of Exploding
Cinema, David Leister's Kino Club, which forms a short case study. The field
of amateur film is then considered and related to the US underground and to
Exploding Cinema.