EXPERIMENTS IN MATERIALITY AND REPRESENTATION: THE LONDON FILM-MAKERS' CO-OPERATIVE 1968 – 1979

Abstract

My thesis is centered around the experimental films of the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative. Through the shared workshop spaces and the vision to defy conventional mainstream cinema, the self-led collective was influential in creating new directions of filmic techniques. Placed within a wider discourse of 1970’s experimental film, the aim of my research is to draw on the complexity of processes, narratives, and structures inherent in the Co-op films from 1968 – 1979. Through a technique-based examination, this project will focus on the shifts between abstracted and representational forms, and in turn how the dominant materialist practice began to be replaced by emerging critical feminist theories. Driven by a semiotically informed analysis of specific case studies, I will draw on a range of technical solutions to trace the changes in visual language. The Co-op’s history and its position within the British avant-garde is well recorded, but the interplay the artists had between material and representational reflexivity is an aspect that can be further explored within scholarship surrounding the organisation.