The cinematic stars Americans love to chase and idolize are intended to represent reality; however, the reality is that there are many exceptions to that standard, said Bryan Konefsky, artistic director of Experiments in Cinema.
Basement Films and the Department of Cinematic Arts put on Experiments in Cinema, an experimental film festival, every year. Konefsky said in the early ‘90s, people were touring their experimental films, but that waned about 10 years ago. At that time, he said Gov. Bill Richardson was fostering the Hollywood film industry in New Mexico, which narrowed down the perspectives being portrayed in films.
“The conversation around what a film is started to get sort of anemic,” he said. “We thought if we initiate a festival, that might open up that dialogue a little bit, add a different kind of voice.”
To engage the audience in discussion, there is a formal question-and-answer session after each showing and an informal reception after that, he said. Additionally, there are workshops and talks throughout the festival about alternative filmmaking methods, such as different ways of exposing film for visual effects and putting plant life directly onto film and pressing it.
Konefsky said cinema is a mirror of the human experience. Because mega stars are acting out unrealistic stories, the general audience becomes conditioned to think this is what is expected of them, that this is reality. Experimental films are more nuanced, capturing a broad range of experiences as unique as the people making them, he said.
“We look to these characters and believe in them, but falsely, because Brad Pitt is not me, Angelina Jolie is not you — who cares about these people? But when you have these individuals who are us telling their personal stories, and we can relate to it and there is that mirroring, it’s a much more real kind of experience, and I think you can relate to these films really much better, even though we’ve been socialized into thinking we’re all the same as Brad Pitt and such.”
This has classically been the case with women’s portrayal in films, said Michelle Mellor, a six-year volunteer for the festival who double majors in cinematic arts and theater arts at UNM.
“The representation of women in narrative films, usually Hollywood and also the media, is really poor and harmful,” she said. “A lot of female characters are not even developed: they’re just objects of desire, they’re to be looked at, maybe they have a few lines.”
Konefsky said about 50 percent of the films at the festival are female-produced. Because the festival doesn’t rely on corporate funding, the content is more personal to the filmmakers and the selection is much broader than the sliver of content people can see in movie theaters, he said. Conversely, experimental filmmakers know there is very little chance of making a living off their work, he said.
“You don’t have boardrooms of marketing execs asking, ‘What’s going to sell best at the Cineplex?’ and then sort of bringing everything down to this lowest common denominator,” he said.
Experimental films are “films that take a chance, and the chance that they take is, ‘I want to tell my story from my perspective and that’s it, no apologies,’ not trying to necessarily reach a large audience.”
Konefsky said experimental films are not accepted in mainstream media because the people in charge of the industry have a vested interest in keeping the status quo, while art should always be questioning power and social and cultural norms.
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“I think it’s art’s goal, art’s mission to raise questions and to challenge us to think about ourselves in different ways. I think that is a scary concept because it means that we are actually thinking,” he said. “Thinking human beings are dangerous because they’ll question power structures,” he said.
It’s difficult for Americans in particular to challenge these structures, Konefsky said, because they’ve been so constrained and dumbed down that the possibility of imagining the world in a different way does not occur to them. Experiments in Cinema is an opportunity for the general public to get a taste of what’s possible, he said.
“If you’re not given the opportunity to imagine, if the idea of imagination is not even in your reality, then how do you even consider that concept,” he said. “But given the opportunity … I find that people rise to the occasion in a heartbeat and really love the challenge.”
Experiments in Cinema V7.9
Video art screening: “Videonautas,” a panoramic view of Spanish videocreation
Thursday, 6-8 p.m.
National Hispanic Cultural Center, Bank of America Theatre
1701 Fourth St. S.W.
Nhccnm.org
Free
Experiment 9,
Friday, 6-10 p.m.
UNM Southwest Film Center
$5
Experiments 12-14,
14 films total
Saturday, 6-10 p.m.
Guild Cinema
3405 Central Ave. N.E.
GuildCinema.com
$7
Experiments 15 and 16,
13 films total
Sunday, noon-2:30 p.m.
Guild Cinema
$7
Workshops
“Lightstruck: Cinegram workshop”
Today, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
Ceria building, room 360
Bring objects translucent enough for light to pass through
Free
“Botanicollage: Botanical 16mm film”
Friday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
Art building, room 252
Free
“Improvising with actors for film and video”
Friday, 2-5 p.m.
ARTS Lab
1601 Central Ave. N.E.
Free
ExperimentsInCinema.com
