The first printed use of the term "underground film" occurs in a 1957 essay by Americanfilm criticManny Farber, "Underground Films."[1] Farber uses it to refer to the work of directors who "played an anti-art role in Hollywood." He contrasts "such soldier-cowboy-gangster directors as Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, William Wellman," and others with the "less talented De Sicas and Zinnemanns [who] continue to fascinate the critics." However, as in "Underground Press", the term developed as a metaphorical reference to a clandestine and subversive culture beneath the legitimate and official media.
By the late 1960s, the movement represented by these filmmakers had matured, and some began to distance themselves from the countercultural, psychedelic connotations of the word, preferring terms like avant-garde or experimental to describe their work.
Having been embraced most emphatically by Nick Zedd and the other filmmakers associated with the New York–based Cinema of Transgression and No Wave Cinema of the late 1970s to early 1990s, the term would still be used to refer to the more countercultural fringe of independent cinema.
By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the term had become blurred again, as the work at underground festivals began to blend with more formal experimentation, and the divisions that had been stark ones less than a decade earlier now seemed much less so. If the term is used at all, it connotes a form of very low budget independent filmmaking, with perhaps transgressive content, or a lo-fi analog to post-punk music and cultures.
A recent development in underground filmmaking can be observed through the Lower East Side based film production company ASS Studios. Founded in 2011 by writer Reverend Jen and filmmaker Courtney Fathom Sell, the group avoided most modern methods of production, choosing to shoot all of their work on an outdated Hi 8 format and usually with no-budget. Utilizing many New York based performers, their work generally contained camp elements and taboo themes. These films were commonly screened at venues & bars in and around New York City.[6][7]
Underground versus cult
The term "underground film" is occasionally used as a synonym for cult film (as in the case of films like Eating Raoul).[8] Though there are important distinctions between the two, a significant overlap between these categories is undeniable. The films of Kenneth Anger, for example, could arguably be described as underground[9] while a studio film like Heathers (New World Pictures) may have a cult following, but could not be accurately described as an underground film.[10]
Criticism
Film critic Pauline Kael called most underground cinema "a creature of publicity and mutual congratulations on artistry".[11]
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