Experimental Redefined

I love experimentation in filmmaking. It is how the medium grows, evolves, and moves forward. The problem is that many films we call experimental aren’t really experimenting. They are simply doing what we expect from an “experimental film”: Complex collages, abstract visuals and sounds, distorted images, confusing and meaningless structures, and all the randomness that comes with it. Is that experimentation or a repetitive illusion of it?

In fact, a film can’t be experimental in the pure sense, it can just contain small experimental elements. It can add, remove, or change a few words within an existing language of cinema, like how art has always evolved. Every artist builds on the work before them by making small, subtle changes that add up over time. So, to me, the true experimenters in cinema are the filmmakers who push the cinema forward with these small achievements. They don’t necessarily label their films as experimental, but their work has that quality.

When I talk about experimentation in my own work, that’s what I mean: Small, incremental attempts in which characterization is the heart. You pull certain features out of the shadows and make them visible while others slip into the background. With small adjustments, you disrupt the setting and create an imbalance, which opens a way to an experiment. It may not be noticeable at first glance, unlike any so-called experimental films, but it has an evolutionary cinematic potential.

But We Love Standards

The standards we use to judge good films today were born from those small experiments in the past. So experimentation isn’t just something to tolerate; it’s the engine of progress for good films of tomorrow. If we take a quick look at the history of cinema, the whole idea isn’t that complicated. But somewhere along the way, those standards have clouded our judgment, and we have started to sort and categorize the films. We created certain measures to label a film as experimental, which I don’t think really fit the term. So, here, to illustrate my stance, I have selected a list of films that are not known or labeled as entirely experimental but have experimental aspects, in my opinion.

I won’t introduce those films. Instead, I will write a sentence or two about each of their experiments of the time. Also, I don’t consider them revolutionary like most film historians do. To me, every film is, in a way, like every other film. They are works of the time in which they were made. But when we call certain films revolutionary, we make it sound as if they changed everything in an instant. That’s an easy story to tell, but not the real one. Today, we don’t know which films will be considered revolutionary in the future. That’s why, when we talk about recent films, it’s more about personal taste than anything else. So there was never a revolution, but just a slow, steady evolution. Over time, we simply selected moments that felt important and labeled them as revolutionary. It’s a (lazy) construct.

A Single (Good) Film is the Whole History of Cinema Wrapped into One

Of course, I don’t intend to rewrite the history of cinema. Classics are classics for a reason, and most of them earned their place. It’s done, and I am also too lazy to reconstruct it. That’s why I stick to the ones everyone already knows and appreciates, even if they are not my favorite ones to watch. But as we get closer to the present time, things will get less settled, and my picks start to feel more personal.

Let me add that I don’t claim that these films were the first to experiment with what I mentioned, but I do claim that they are good examples of experiments that existed before they became a conventional phenomenon (I have seen around 2000 films so far, but I believe the quantity is not important; I consider a single (good) film as the whole history of cinema wrapped into one, until its time).

Experimentations at a Glance

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Carl Theodor Dreyer: Removed the noise. No big sets, no distractions. Just raw emotion written on actors’ faces on emotional close-ups.

Citizen Kane (1941), Orson Welles: Held the shots longer, used deep focus, and kept actors sharp in both the foreground and background.

Bicycle Thieves (1948), Vittorio De Sica: Took the camera to the real streets out of the studios.

Tokyo Story (1953), Yasujiro Ozu: Turned spaces into characters with low, fixed shots.

A Man Escaped (1956), Robert Bresson: Made sound equally important to images by conveying part of the narrative through actions heard rather than seen. Turned voice-over into an active cinematic tool, not just narration, but as an inner voice of the character that interprets and reacts to his situation and environment.

Pickpocket (1959), Robert Bresson: Reduced everything to image, sound, rhythm, and repetition to create a pure, minimalist cinematic experience. Avoided dramatic acting and explicit exposition, which derived from other art forms such as music, literature, and theater.

Good Morning (1959), Yasujiro Ozu: Turned everyday audiovisuals into comedy. Even farts became characters.

Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Jean-Luc Godard: Created distance over connection, analysis over emotion by telling what’s coming in advance.

The Collector (1967), Eric Rohmer: Turned voice-over into an interactive tool to play with the audience’s assumptions, where words and actions contradicted each other.

Husbands (1970), John Cassavetes: Let the actors drive. Their performance and emotional depth took center stage.

Nashville (1970), Robert Altman: Observed life in a naturalistic way around an event with multiple characters but without a clear protagonist. A Brueghel approach in cinema.

Mirror (1975), Andrei Tarkovsky: Used fragmented scenes that meant nothing in particular to create a poetic and nonlinear cinematic language without relying on symbolism.

One Way Boogie Woogie (1977), James Benning: Combined photographic observations with interactive direction that invites the audience to co-create.

Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Jim Jarmusch: Edited with gaps. Made the moments matter, not the continuity.

World of Glory (1991), Roy Andersson: Turned an absurd universe and characters into real human concerns and situations. Strange world, deeply human concerns.

Kairat (1992), Darezhan Omirbayev: Skipped big scenes, hinted at them instead. Less shown, more felt. A marginalized Bresson approach in minimalist filmmaking.

Vive L’amour (1994), Tsai Ming-liang: Kept characters quiet and mysterious, which leads the audience to construct them.

Funny Games (1997), Michael Haneke: Used the concept of anti-film by challenging the audience’s assumptions.

Taste of Cherry (1997), Abbas Kiarostami: Left questions unanswered about the protagonist’s background to create space for reflection.

Hukkle (2002), Gyorgy Palfi: Treated people, animals, and objects equally in framing and observation.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), Cristi Puiu: Made fiction feel ultra-real by using cinema verite documentary style.

Distant (2013), Zhengfan Yang: Reflected human emotion through naturalistic visuals and quiet, painting-like compositions. A Caspar David Friedrich approach in cinema.

The Tribe (2014), Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi: Prioritized visual storytelling with sign and body language.

Uncut Gems (2019), Josh and Benny Safdie: Prioritized dynamic and fast rhythm, maintained constantly without (almost) any gaps.

You can find the list of films mentioned in this post on my Letterboxd page here.