Structural film was an avant-garde experimental film movement prominent in the United States in the 1960s and which developed into the Structural/materialist films in the United Kingdom in the 1970s.^{[1] [2]}

Overview

The term was coined by P. Adams Sitney who noted that film artists had moved away from the complex and condensed forms of cinema practiced by such artists as Sidney Peterson and Stan Brakhage. "Structural film" artists pursued instead a more simplified, sometimes even predetermined art. The shape of the film was crucial, the content peripheral. This term should not be confused with the literary and philosophical term structuralism.^[3]

Characteristics

The Flicker (1965) by Tony Conrad produces a flicker effect with black and white frames.^[4]

Sitney identified four formal characteristics common in Structural films, but all four characteristics are not usually present in any single film:

• fixed camera position (an apparently fixed framing)
• flicker effect (strobing due to the intermittent nature of film)
• loop printing
• rephotography (off the screen)

It has been noted by George Maciunas that these characteristics are also present in Fluxus films.^[5]

Key films

• The Flicker (Tony Conrad, 1965)^[6]
• Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1966–67)^[7]
• T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G (Paul Sharits, 1968)^[8]
• One Second in Montreal (Michael Snow, 1969)^[9]
• Zorns Lemma (Hollis Frampton, 1970)^[10]
• Serene Velocity (Ernie Gehr, 1970)^[11]
• Remedial Reading Comprehension (George Landow, 1971)^[12]
• The United States of America (James Benning and Bette Gordon, 1975)^[13]

Key filmmakers

• Bette Gordon^[14]
• James Benning
• Tony Conrad
• Hollis Frampton^[15]
• Ernie Gehr
• Birgit and Wilhelm Hein
• Kurt Kren
• George Landow (a.k.a. Owen Land)^[16]
• Paul Sharits
• Michael Snow
• Joyce Wieland
• Sharon Lockhart