Comments on experimental as genre/form: Brian, I looked at the descriptions with an eye towards experimental film. Though the categories seem good, there are some discrepancies. For example, LOST LOST LOST (Jonas Mekas, 1949-1976) and THE TIES THAT BIND (Su Friedrich, 1984) are both referred to as Experimental + Biographical. Biographical, however, does not seem to include Autobiography, and is characterized as "Fictional work dramatizing the life (or portion thereof) of an actual historical figure..." or as "Nonfiction work documenting the life and career (or portion thereof) of an individual or small group of related persons such as a family. Note: Not necessary to also use Documentary, since that is implied by the term Biographical (Nonfiction)." Neither LOST LOST LOST nor THE TIES THAT BIND, however, are fiction nor documentary, in the terms posed in the descriptions given ("In Documentary, actuality should still be dominant over the creative treatment..."). Moreover, the two films differ in an important way that is not taken into account by the "+Biographical" modifier: LOST LOST LOST is made up of shots filmed by the author at the time of the events in the film; whereas THE TIES THAT BIND is a reconstruction of the life of the filmmaker's mother during WWII using interview, stock footage, scratched footage, symbolic shots, and voice over. Therefore, LOST LOST LOST can be defined as Film Diary, and THE TIES THAT BIND as Portrait. You could also add +War, but again the categories are not satisfying (war fiction=redramatization, war nonfiction=documentary on specific battles or events...) This is just one example of a general problem that I think stems from putting Fiction, Documentary and Experimental all into the Genre list instead of the Form list. If these were categorized as forms, then any subject, genre or theme such as biography or war could be treated in any form (animation, experimental, fiction, documentary, etc..), and you would not have to specify this form as part of the genre definition. Another problem which I started to evoke above is that there are many categories within experimental film (I have mentioned Film Diary and Portrait). Other subforms include Found Footage (reappropriating film not shot by the author, including but not limited to stock shots), Lettrism (films about film form, can be rather militant), Chemical/Hand Processing or Treatment (picture is broken down chemically using tinters, toners, acids, peroxides; picture is developed manually using nonstandard chemistry; film grain is reticulated, solarized, or otherwise distorted, altered or discolored), Optical Printing (picture is broken down or altered optically, either step-printed, reframed, rerhythmed, refiltered, or several pictures are combined on the same screen), Nature (studies in the colors and textures of nature i.e. MOTHLIGHT), City Symphonies (urban imagery - "BERLIN--DIE SYMPHONIE EINER GROSSTADT" is already evoked under Documentary), Historical Avant-Garde (Dada, Surrealism, etc), Psychedelic (incl. computer animation and "acid optical printing"), Militant/Political, Gay/Lesbian, Structural, Lyrical, Interactions with other art forms (for example, for film+music, the films of Henry Hills or Peter Kubelka, for film+photo, those of Gary Beydler, NOSTALGIA by Hollis Frampton, Paul de Nooijer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy..., film+dance=Maya Deren, Doris Chase....). There are many categories, and each category would help to distinguish between hundreds of films. You started to do this under Animation, though those categories are not succinct enough; for example, for cameraless animation, now defined as "type of animation in which the images are drawn directly on the film stock, rather than photographed," you should add to drawn: painted, scratched, stenciled, layed down and exposed (such as in Len Lye's COLOR CRY, 1952), glued (MOTHLIGHT again), taped (Giovanni Martedi's FILM SANS CAMERA, 1974), previously photographed images removed and repositioned layer by layer, (color by color) using ammonia and scotch tape (Cecile Fontaine's JAPON SERIES, 1991), and other various processes. These comments are not sufficient to account for all types of experimental film (for example, Warhol's SLEEP still does not fit into any category), but I think the description given for experimental film is far too cursory (compared to the myriad of narrative genres elaborated) to allow identifying an entire body of work which by the nature of its relevance in American film history and by its scope deserves to be given a taxonomy as diverse and developed as the art form itself. An institution of the US government such as the Library of Congress should do all it can to demarginalize experimental film, considering the wide influence American filmmakers from across the country have had since before the underground movements of the 1950's. -Pip Chodorov ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]