Black Analogue: Practices in US and UK Experimental Filmmaking as Methodological Approaches for a New Black Aesthetic

Black Aesthetic filmmaking is best realised through the use of 16mm film. I investigate the veracity of this proposition- that 16mm film is a medium that US and UK Black experimental filmmakers gravitate towards because of the aesthetic qualities and production processes it necessitates. I show that Black experimental filmmakers are entangled in both an inside and outside relationship to modernity, often producing counter culturally. This thesis proposes that 16mm technology is a useful form to express the ways in which movements, communities or identities gather because its contemporary use is also counter cultural.

Where historically, Black Aesthetic manifestos focused on text, theatre and music, and Black film discourse often centres around realism or sociological concerns, this thesis intervenes to centralise aesthetics and its influence on cultural representation. I draw chiefly from the Black experimental filmmaking practices of historic UK and US filmmakers which existed alongside Black power movements in 1970’s US and later 1980’s Black resistance in Thatcherite Britain.

I propose three Black Aesthetic Strategies: dislocation/relocation, Black affect and errantry. By testing these strategies as methodological approaches for film production, I have produced three experimental films, which each address a facet of Afro-Caribbean community in the UK. The first, dislocation/relocation considers the aesthetics of space, the 16mm camera and Caribbean associations in the UK. Secondly, I consider Black affect by using 16mm machines to alter the surface of the emulsion and archival images of a defunct Black arts centre. Thirdly, I consider errantry as a 16mm Black Aesthetic Strategy that errs from aesthetic norms at the spectacle of UK carnivals. By testing the viability of these Black Aesthetic Strategies, I show 16mm as an important practice of present day Black experimental filmmaking. The New Black Aesthetic conclusion I propose centres around labour, relation, sociality and slow, deliberate use.