Introduction: The New American Cinema Group in Europe: The 1960s Grand Tour and its Afterlife

Abstract

Introduction: The New American Cinema Group in Europe:The 1960s Grand Tour and its Afterlife Ronald Gregg (bio) From May 12 to 22, 1967, the Unione Culturale, a leftist cultural organization in Torino, Italy, hosted a festival of experimental film screenings from the New American Cinema Group. The festival was organized by Italian drama critic and vice-president of the Unione Culturale Edoardo Fadini, curated by filmmaker and critic Jonas Mekas, and funded in large part by filmmaker and philanthropist Jerome Hill, the leading patron of the New York experimental film scene in the 1960s. The ten-day program featured 63 films, including work by Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol, Hill, Mekas, and many other important filmmakers in the New York City underground. Along with the screenings, there was a final round table discussion including Mekas, Hill, filmmaker and underground actor Taylor Mead, and Italian filmmakers, critics, and scholars. Versions of the 1967 festival traveled to other Italian and European cities and were attended by filmmakers and critics across Europe. For instance, for the Pesaro screening (May 26–June 5, 1967) Mekas "supervised" four programs and reported that, along with the Italian audience, there were "large delegations from Eastern countries … Czechs and Yugoslavs in particular expressed a great excitement about our work."1 The 2022 conference "The New American Cinema Group in Europe: The 1960s Grand Tour and Its Afterlife" (held in Torino from May 24 to 26) with screenings and presentations focused on the history and impact of the 1967 Torino festival, the travel of selected films to other European cities, and the archiving and preservation of key influential work. In addition, the conference discussed earlier European screenings of American experimental and [End Page 133] independent film, including the screening of New American Cinema films at the "Festival of Two Worlds" in Spoleto, Italy, in 1961; the traveling exhibition of American experimental film screened in Europe in 1963–64, which was accompanied by critic P. Adams Sitney; and "The Western American Experimental Film" program, which was screened in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Vienna, and Berlin in 1963. The essays included in this dossier by the conference participants offer a wide-ranging study of the 1967 screenings and their impact, including the individuals involved in programming and funding the screenings, American and European filmmakers who revolutionized experimental film, the introduction of new structural and stylistic approaches to experimental film, and the legacy of the festival in the areas of video art, archiving, and preservation, particularly around the work of Stan Brakhage, considered the most influential of those screened at the Torino festival. Some of the essays discuss earlier festivals and screenings of experimental film, expanding upon our knowledge of the travel of experimental film to Europe throughout the 1960s, while challenging the hegemony of an experimental film canon that emerged at the time. Finally, the papers introduce us to various important European and American archives that document the festival and its influence, including archives for Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Jerome Hill, the Cultural Union of Turin under the artistic leadership of Edoardo Fadini, and other European organizations that screened American experimental films from both the east and west coasts. This dossier of essays discusses these individuals, the European screenings, and the films, along with historicizing the place of experimental film in Europe in the 1960s and analyzing its impact. Faye Corthésy's (Université de Lausanne, Swiss) essay "Beyond the United States: Three Propositions Toward a History of New American Cinema's Multiplicity of Sites in the 1960s" introduces and explores three key New American Cinema travelling exhibitions in the 1960s. She discusses the possible outcomes of a transnational reappraisal of New American Cinema's multiplicity of sites and the formation of a canon through the selection and circulation of these films. Ronald Gregg's (Columbia, USA) essay "'Without Jerome': The Patronage of Jerome Hill and the Curating of 1960s American Experimental Work in Europe" explores Hill's importance as a patron for the emerging American experimental cinema and his interest in developing the connections between the American and European avantgarde communities in the 1960s. In his essay "Underground Films in Factory Town: The New American Cinema Group Travels to Turin, Italy in...