'Experimental films are often designed to make us see and experience the world differently.' Has this been your experience as a spectator of the films you have studied for this topic?

    Experimental films are constructed and designed to make the spectator see and experience the world differently. Experimental films are nonconformist, they challenge mainstream conventions and rely mostly on imagery and don't often have a narrative. Arguably, Luis Bunuel 'Un Chien Andalou' is the most popular and most successful experimental film.
    Un Chien Andalou is a surrealist film, the film is displayed as a dream, an element of the subconscious mind. The film was released in 1929, the opening scene created a response straight away as we get a close up of a womans face with another Bunuel himself holding a knife up to her, the film then cuts to a shot of the moon with a cloud moving across it. The moon represents the womans eye, and the cloud represents the knife, in the next shot, we are shown a close up of the womans eye being slit open by the knife with a strange substance coming out of it. Even in the modern 21st century, I found it difficult to watch, and thought I had seen most horrific and extreme things in cinema, so I can imagine in the time of release, many were horrified at the scene. As the film went on, I tried to discover a narrative, but eventually I decided this was a purely surreal film, that relies purely on imagery, during the scene where one of the male characters chases a woman around the room attempting to rape her, he is suddenly out of no-where anchored down by a rope tied to a piano with a dead mule on top of it. This to me had no inner deep meaning, it was purely imagery of Bunuels subconscious mind and dreams placed in front of the camera to challenge the spectator. Bunuel once said in an interview "reject any idea or thing that has meaning". This film overall made me see the world differently as it's not all black and white, we are capable of thinking such shocking and strange things, and Bunuel proved this by putting it on a movie screen.
     Another experimental film is Godfrey Reggios 'Koyaansqatsi'. It is very different to Bunuels Un Chien Andalou, but is still considered experimental as there are no actors or script and was filmed over a 4 year period. Koyaansqatsi is a montage sequence, it focuses on human destruction to the earth by showing changes visually to the earth over a certain amount of time. The opening scene is very dramatic, slow motion imagery of the earth in it's true form, just open space and beautiful scenery, but then we start to get imagery of the modern day earth, buildings, cars, roads. During one of the scenes in which the buildings are shown, the non-diegetic soundtrack is quite dominant and powerful and sounds very triumphant, this subtly shows the audience that mankind is triumphant and has won the battle over nature. I responded to this in almost a guilty way, as I am part of the race that has destroyed the earth that was here before us, even though I did not take part in any kind of destruction whatsoever. After watching Koyaansqatsi, it enabled me to see the world we live in differently, and I appreciated those parts of the earth not yet touched by man kind.
     Jon Svankmajers stop-motion film 'Darkness Light Darkness' is also seen as an experimental film. The film is constructed in a way to gain more than one response from it's spectator, when first watching the film, I went through many different emotions. The film features a group of body parts slowly coming together as they work out what goes where. This is presented to us in quite a humorous way, for example when the eyes are put on the ends of two fingers and it looks directly at the camera, or when the two feet come together and squish the face, etc. At this point, I found the film quite funny and didn't think it was very serious, however, then real human body organs start to come into the scene, which are in their natural colours, red, brown, where as the rest of the body and room is very dull and bland, this grabbed my attention straight away and started to make me feel a bit sick. As it grabbed my attention, I started to become a much more active viewer, and believe their may be meaning behind the film, which I found out toward the end, when the body is complete, it is very cramped inside the room, the meaning behind this is the more real you become, the more trapped you will be.
     Experimental films vary, and are presented and constructed in a number ways but always attempt to make the spectator see and experience the world differently, after watching all 3 films, the response I got from all 3 were different, but I certainly saw and experienced the world differently.