Paracinema
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Paracinema
Paracinema is an academic term to refer to a wide variety of film genres out of the mainstream, bearing the same relationship to 'legitimate' film as paraliterature like comic books and pulp fiction bears to literature. Definition In terms of taste and attitude in cinema practice, paracinema is similar to camp, and both are conceptually linked to trash and kitsch in the world of cult cinema. The term was first defined by cultural historian Jeffrey Sconce, who described paracinema as 'an extremely elastic textual category'. In addition to art film, horror, and science fiction films, "paracinema" catalogues "include entries from such seemingly disparate genres" as badfilm, splatterpunk, mondo films, sword-and-sandal epics, Elvis flicks, government hygiene films, Japanese monster movies, beach party musicals, and "just about every other historical manifestation of exploitation cinema from juvenile delinquency documentaries to ... pornography. Paracinema denotes an oppositi ...
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Exploitation Film
An exploitation film is a film that tries to succeed financially by exploiting current trends, niche genres, or lurid content. Exploitation films are generally low-quality "B movies", though some set trends, attract critical attention, become historically important, and even gain a cult following. History Exploitation films may feature suggestive or explicit sex, sensational violence, drug use, nudity, gore, destruction, rebellion, mayhem, and the bizarre. Such films were first seen in their modern form in the early 1920s, but they were popularized in the 60s and 70s with the general relaxing of censorship and cinematic taboos in the U.S. and Europe. An early example, the 1933 film Ecstasy, included nude scenes featuring the Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr. The film proved popular at the box office but caused concern for the American cinema trade association, the MPPDA. Hildegard Esper and Dwain Esper are husband and wife film directors and producers who made some of the most ...
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Jeffrey Sconce
Jeffrey Sconce is a professor and cultural historian of media and film. He is a professor in the Screen Cultures program at Northwestern University. Early life and education Sconce has a B.A., B.S., and M.A. from the University of Texas, Austin, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin Madison. Career He is the author of ''The Technical Delusion: Electronics, Power, Insanity,'' published by Duke University Press in 2019, and ''Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television'', published by Duke University Press in 2000. Chapters from ''Haunted Media'' have been translated into French and German. He is also the editor of ''Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Financing,'' published by Duke University Press in 2007. As a media historian, Sconce's work concentrates primarily on the occult, supernatural, and psychotic accounts of electronic media technologies. His 1995 article, "Trashing the Academy: Taste, Excess and an Emerging Politics of ...
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Academic
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and skill, north of Athens, Greece. Etymology The word comes from the ''Academy'' in ancient Greece, which derives from the Athenian hero, ''Akademos''. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning. The sacred space, dedicated to the goddess of wisdom, Athena, had formerly been an olive grove, hence the expression "the groves of Academe". In these gardens, the philosopher Plato conversed with followers. Plato developed his sessions into a method of teaching philosophy and in 387 BC, established what is known today as the Old Academy. By extension, ''academia'' has come to mean the accumulation, d ...
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Mystery Science Theater 3000
''Mystery Science Theater 3000'' (abbreviated as ''MST3K'') is an American science fiction comedy film review television series created by Joel Hodgson. The show premiered on WUCW, KTMA-TV (now WUCW) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 24, 1988. It then moved to nationwide broadcast, first on The Comedy Channel (United States), The Comedy Channel/Comedy Central for seven seasons until its cancellation in 1996. Thereafter, it was picked up by Syfy, The Sci-Fi Channel and aired for three more seasons until another cancellation in August 1999. A 60-episode Broadcast syndication, syndication package titled ''The Mystery Science Theater Hour'' was produced in 1993 and broadcast on Comedy Central and syndicated to TV stations in 1995. In 2015, Hodgson led a crowdfunding, crowdfunded revival of the series with 14 episodes in its eleventh season, first released on Netflix on April 14, 2017, with another six-episode season following on November 22, 2018. A second successful crowdfundin ...
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Paraliterature
Paraliterature comprises written works dismissed as not literary. It includes commercial fiction, popular fiction, pulp fiction, comic books and, most notably, genre fiction with works of science fiction, fantasy, mystery and others.:361 The term was originally used in French literary studies to 'designate a phenomenon characteristic of the age of mass communications - the fantastic spread of a mass literature', and as early as 1970 a special collection of critical articles on paraliterature appeared in France.:95-96 Art critic and scholar Rosalind Krauss brought the term to prominence In the United States through her text 'Poststructuralism and the "Paraliterary"' (1980). Krauss argues the paraliterary is 'the space of debate, quotation, partisanship, betrayal, reconciliation; but it is not the space of unity, coherence, or resolution that we think of as constituting the work of literature.':37 She links the paraliterary to postmodern literature, noting 'it is not surprising that ...
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Tony Conrad
Anthony Schmalz Conrad (March 7, 1940 – April 9, 2016) was an American video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician, composer, sound artist, teacher, and writer. Active in a variety of media since the early 1960s, he was a pioneer of both drone music and structural film. As a musician, he was an important figure in the New York minimalist scene of the early 1960s, during which time he performed as part of the Theatre of Eternal Music (along with John Cale, La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, and others). He became recognized as a filmmaker for his 1966 film '' The Flicker''. He performed and collaborated with a wide range of artists over the course of his career. Biography Early life Conrad was born in Concord, New Hampshire to Mary Elizabeth Parfitt and Arthur Emil Conrad but raised in Baldwin, Maryland and Northern Virginia. His father worked with Everett Warner during World War II in designing dazzle camouflage for the US Navy. Conrad's high school violin lessons wit ...
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Ken Jacobs
Ken Jacobs (born May 25, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American experimental filmmaker. His style often involves the use of found footage which he edits and manipulates. He has also directed films using his own footage. Ken Jacobs directed '' Blonde Cobra'' in 1963. This short film stars Jack Smith who directed his own ''Flaming Creatures'' the same year. In 1969 he directed ''Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son'' (1969, USA), in which he took the original 1905 short film and manipulated the footage to recontextualize it. This is considered an important first example of deconstruction in film. The film was admitted to the National Film Registry in 2007. His '' Star Spangled to Death'' (2004, USA) is a nearly seven-hour film consisting largely of found footage. Jacobs began compiling the archival footage in the 1950s and the film took years to complete. Jacobs taught at the Cinema Department at Harpur College at Binghamton University from 1969 to 2002. His son Azazel Jacobs is al ...
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Conceptual Art
Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called installations, may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions. This method was fundamental to American artist Sol LeWitt's definition of conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print: Tony Godfrey, author of ''Conceptual Art (Art & Ideas)'' (1998), asserts that conceptual art questions the nature of art, a notion that Joseph Kosuth elevated to a definition of art itself in his seminal, early manifesto of conceptual art, ''Art after Philosophy'' (1969). The notion that art should examine its own nature was already a potent aspect of the influential art critic Clement Greenberg's vision of Modern art during the 1950s. With the emergence of an exclusively language-based art in the 1960s, however, conceptual ...
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Experimental Film
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources. While some experimental films have been distributed through mainstream channels or even made within commercial studios, the vast majority have been produced on very low budgets with a minimal crew or a single person and are either self-financed or supported through small grants. Experimental filmmakers generally begin as amateurs, and some use experimental films as a springboard into commercial film-making or transition into academic positions. The aim of experimental filmmaking may be to render the personal vision of an artist, or to promote interest in new technology rather t ...
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Avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical Debate and Poetic Practices' (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), p. 64 . It is frequently characterized by aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability.Kostelanetz, Richard, ''A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes'', Routledge, May 13, 2013
The avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the ''
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