Film: Film-making in the abstract

A festival of abstract films gives aficionados of the avante-garde a once in a generation chance to immerse themselves in the medium. Chris Darke reports

"There is", says the high priest of American experimental film, Stan Brakhage, "an area of film that has absolutely nothing to do with multi-million dollar movie productions." This form of film-making - call it experimental, avant-garde or independent - has a history. Several histories, in fact, but one consistent characteristic; that of abstraction.

For the first time in some 20 years, London audiences have the chance to immerse themselves in this "other" cinema, thanks to the efforts of the film-maker and curator Adam Clitheroe. Having assembled an extensive and adventurous programme of abstract film, Clitheroe is keen for audiences to understand that this is not purely dry and academic fine-art work but has informed aspects of Nineties culture.

"The 1990s abstract work ties back in with the early abstract films in that it uses music to structure the imagery." Clitheroe explains. "It's slightly dismissive to call such work `visual wallpaper'. I've tried to make the programme representative of what's going on in the 1990s by having one or two `trip videos'. The musical element informs so many different parts of our culture, so why shouldn't it go into abstract film?"

In the 1940s, the American experimentalists John and James Whitney produced abstract animations that pursued the German animator Oskar Fischinger's inaugural experiments with musical structures. Employing a combination of papercuts and machinery which they developed and operated themselves, the brothers produced work that John Whitney describes as "a visual musical experience".

In such work one identifies a further characteristic of the experimental tradition, that of the artisanal approach to film-making, an appropriation of technology allowing for small-scale but resolutely individual explorations of film's abstract formal possibilities. James Whitney's work eventually diverged from his brother John's. Yantra (1955) and Lapis (1965) testify to the American avant-garde's enduring fascination for Eastern mysticism, its recurring motif being the iconic form of the mandala.

Jordan Belson was another of the American school of abstract animators who, having started out as a painter, turned to film in the 1950s and explored a deepening interest in mystical religions. Belson's Re-entry (1964) and World (1970) explore "spiritual states' through imagery derived from optical distortions "suggesting celestial phenomena". Belson started using simple graphic abstractions but moved towards work modelled on structures suggested by yogic and Buddhist texts.

Other abstract filmmakers who approached their work in a similar manner, working directly on to the filmstock itself, include Len Lye and Stan Brakhage. Lye worked in the same manner throughout his life and, according to P Adams Sitney's account of what he terms "absolute animation" as a strand in avant-garde cinema, Lye pioneered the hand-painting of film in his work A Colour Box (1935), "the result of this direct method although Lye's experiments in hand-painting go back to the mid-1920s".

Brakhage has continued to explore this practice to extraordinary effect in his hand-painted films of the 1980s, working with acrylic paints on a variety of film gauges including 35mm and Imax (which has an aspect ratio eight times the size of the 35mm film frame), producing such vividly beautiful work as Night Music (1986) and Rage Net (1988).

Belson and Brakhage contribute two of the most intriguing events in the season. In the 1969 British film Doppleganger (aka Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, Sat 21 March, 8.30pm), Belson designed a lengthy abstract sequence that punctuates this take on post-2001 sci-fi psychedelia.

"The main reason that Doppleganger is in the programme is as an attempt to take the abstract image out of the purely experimental context and into a more popular vehicle." Clitheroe expands, "The sequence by Jordan Belson is modelled on meditational and yogic principles. Belson didn't like working for money and asked for his name to be taken off the credits. Gerry and Sylvia Anderson (of Thunderbirds fame) wrote and produced Doppleganger which was their first feature film."

Stan Brakhage's epic contemplation on mankind's existence in the universe Dog Star Man will also receive a rare British screening (Fri 27 March, 8.30pm). It's a feature-length work of legendary intensity and Clitheroe commissioned the contemporary electronic composer Ewan Pearson, who records under the moniker MAAS, to perform a live musical soundtrack to Brakhage's film.

"It's really interesting to mix a film from what is considered to be a high-art form with music from what's seen to be a low-art populist form," Pearson enthuses. An aficionado of dance culture and modern electronica, Pearson is intrigued by the event as one that explores a 60s/90s cultural overlap. "Part of the thing with dance music is that it's never just about music, as it's based on repetition and dance music is absolutely of that mould."

Along with the broad historical perspective given across the programme, Abstract Art in Film also promises a major reassessment of this history as it has impacted on contemporary abstract film and electronic/ambient dance music. Set the controls for the heart of the sun and prepare for major perceptual bliss-out.

18-28 March, Lux Centre, Hoxton Square, London, Details: 0171-684 0201.