Underground - American Avant-Garde Film in the 1960s

Work by key figures in avant-garde cinema

The exhibition features work by key figures in avant-garde cinema, including Jonas Mekas, Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage, alongside films by makers from the world of visual arts, with Bruce Conner, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono and Andy Warhol as well-known names. All this against the turbulent backdrop of a society in flux.

Dancing bridges, introspective diary entries and dreamy stop motions – these are examples of experiments that a collection of avant-garde makers undertook in the 1960s in the United States. The goal: to shake off the shackles of Hollywood and the dominant film industry and reinvent cinema as a concrete medium for visual art.

Underground

Underground: American Avant-Garde Film in the 1960s shows the diversity and dynamism that characterize this period of cross-disciplinary film experiments: from independent, idiosyncratic films, intended for screening in (independently managed) cinemas, to expanded experiments, including Andy Warhol's eight-hour Empire (1964) or Stan VanDerBeek's impressive, 11-channel installation Movie Mural (1965-1968), which will be shown in the Netherlands for the first time.

The exhibition stays close to the source of the underground movement, showing the rise of experimental cinema in the United States and the creation of collectives active from the early 1960s onwards, such as New American Cinema Group in New York, better known as the Film-Makers' Cooperative, Fluxus and Canyon Cinema in San Francisco.

Please note: the time window mentioned per day is an indication, check the website for the start and end times of the individual program components.