ABSTRACT
This chapter considers experimental films made in particular countries at specific historical moments and explores a variety of ways in which experimental film challenges conventional approaches to filmmaking. It offers indicative approaches to the study of experimental films that could be used in relation to a variety of other such texts. There is one form of experimental film we will not be studying closely here and that is abstract film, which uses colour, light, shape, movement, and the resulting patterns to create what might be described as an on-screen equivalent to abstract painting. One of the central connecting features of experimental film, surreal film, and mainstream narrative film is that they each involve the manipulation of our experience of space and time. The close-ups with which we begin the film make it clear that this is to be an interrogation of our central character, Nana.
