Avant-garde

Long before home video there flourished an alternative cinema culture on college campuses and around art theaters, where foreign film fare was often accompanied by a short subject. As reliable 16mm film equipment became available to non-professionals, artists independent of film centers began experimenting with cinema. Serious film societies sprang up in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, holding semi-private screenings of non-commercial artistic films. For years, these pictures have been exhibited only in infrequent museum screenings, if at all. This collection is of mainly American pictures, principally one-man artistic endeavors made from little more than an artist's desire to express feelings with a camera.