Experimental Cinema as Poetic Cinema: The “Grupo Goethe” and the Films of Hirsch and Caldini

Abstract

Chapter One examines the work of the “Grupo Goethe,” and in particular two filmmakers, Caldini and Hirsch, who formed part of this group of experimental filmmakers who began working in the late 1960s and continue today. Intermedial and generic instability or indiscipline are central to the filmmakers’ novel and creative approaches to both film and poetry. What is of particular interest to this chapter is the conception of “poetic” cinema developed by these filmmakers and those who study them. Caldini and Hirsch’s works reveal a conception of “poetic” cinema as opposed to narrative cinema, but not linked in any strong sense to poetry as a literary genre or even a linguistic phenomenon. An assessment of their work based on close analysis of their films obliges us to rethink the easy association of “experimental” and “poetic” cinemas, before moving on to a consideration of their links to so-called “expanded cinema,” including the use of film in performance, and what this tells us about intermediality on screen.