OKLAHOMA CITY – When you think of “experimental” film, it might be easy to picture some absurdly strange video collage art or a mash of unintelligible imagery designed only to unnerve or upset your expectations, and yeah, that can be a big part of it.
But experimental film isn’t always about experimenting with the fundamental forms of cinema. Sometimes it’s about utilizing those forms to experiment instead with structure, storytelling, or even just technique and equipment.
Well, if you feel like shaking off your norms and challenging your own expectations of what a fantasy, a crime thriller, or even a nature documentary can be, then OKC theaters have some can’t-miss screenings for you in September.
The films here embrace psychological surrealism, shape-shifting fantasy, and even unexpected camera technology to reconsider how we fit into the natural world, into society, and even into our own lives.
And I can’t think of any better goals for art than those.
‘Lost Highway’ feat. a special screening of ‘Blunt Force’ – Rodeo Cinema – September 11
Of course, you can’t have a great list of surreal and experimental film without the legendary David Lynch.
On first glance, 1997’s “Lost Highway” might appear to be one of the oddball auteur’s more straightforward films, with its sleek, late-night Hollywood look and its mysterious noir plot following a noise-jazz sax player inexplicably blamed for the murder of his wife.
But then everything takes a major detour and it rapidly becomes one of Lynch’s darkest, creepiest, and most mind-wrenching films, featuring some of his most evocative Los Angeles cinematography and a soundtrack alternating between the tragically ethereal and head-splitting goth-metal.
It’s a complete inversion of the rules of cinematic storytelling, openly destroying everything that’s supposed to ground and reassure a viewer in their understanding of the story being told. More than the floating, lyrical “Mulholland Dr.” and more than the arguably plot-less “Eraserhead,” “Lost Highway” is inviting you onto a path and then intentionally dropping the bottom out beneath you, leaving you without any bearing or any safety net.
But even though there’s characteristically little as far as answers or explanations go, what Lynch’s dark late-90s masterpiece leaves you with is an exploration of how we fit ourselves into the story of our own lives, of haunted trauma, violent jealousy, and enough guilt for two lifetimes.
The screening will also feature the short “Blunt Force” from Oklahoman writer/director Elijah Bigler, who will present both films and discuss how “Lost Highway” influenced his work as part of Rodeo’s Echoes & Origins series.
For showtimes, tickets, and more, visit rodeocinema.org.
‘Holy Motors’ – Oklahoma Film Exchange – September 12
From one acclaimed outsider auteur to another, France’s Leos Carax has built a still-developing career on a more fantastical brand of surrealism and an open disregard for traditional structure.
But while Lynch’s work often examines the stories and lies that we tell to ourselves, Carax is more interested in the stories that we tell to the world.
Much like his deliciously strange, doll-led experimental musical “Annette,” Carax’s “Holy Motors” explores the roles and characters that we play for the audience that is society, but it’s also more direct and focused in its commentary on the effect that filmmaking and entertainment have on everyday life.
Over the course of one day in Paris, a man travels via limousine to a number of different surrealist scenarios and “appointments,” each requiring him to inhabit a different character and to live a different life, with only a brief limo-bound respite in between each.
Throughout, Carax is experimenting openly with expectations and cinematic structures, inverting the tropes of different common film styles and storytelling genres while unraveling the emotional burdens of the acting profession.
It’s odd, artsy, goofy, and undeniably “French,” which is to say that it’s the stuff that art-house micro-theaters like the OK Film Exchange were made for.
For more, visit oklahomafilmexchange.com.
‘Collective Monologue’ –Oklahoma City Museum of Art – September 18
The experimental documentary is a form that’s been gaining steam recently, with more filmmakers exploring ways to deconstruct the tiring tropes and fraying expectations of true-life documentary work.
For British-Argentine director Jessica Sarah Rinland, that means incorporating different camera technologies and techniques and de-incorporating the usual narration or voice-over that we might expect to tell us what we’re supposed to feel in a traditional modern doc.
An up-close examination of animal life, zoos, and caregivers, Rinland’s “Collective Monologue” resists any urge to impart a morality or judgment on its topic, instead utilizing 16mm film, infrared cameras, and surveillance footage to present a commentary-less insight into the realities of the zoos and rescue centers of Argentina.
By turns beautiful, harsh, life-affirming, and concerning, Rinland’s cameras draw the animals, humans, and the rapidly changing systems and regulations themselves into a single, unique animal kingdom with its own hierarchies and relationships built on respect, dominion, and reciprocal love.
It’s quiet, contemplative, and committed to its refusal to tell you what you should think or feel.
And that might actually be the most “experimental” thing that a piece of art can attempt right now.
For showtimes, tickets, and more, visit okcmoa.com.
Catch Brett Fieldcamp’s film column weekly for information and insights into the world of film in the Oklahoma City metro and Oklahoma. | Brought to you by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
Brett Fieldcamp is our Arts and Entertainment Editor. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for 15+ years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
