State of the (Sub)Field: A Roundtable on Experimental Film Studies

What is experimental film studies? Where is it located, institutionally and discursively, and what are its most urgent stakes? How has the field evolved over time, and what future directions are emerging? Such questions are fundamental to the ways that experimental film is produced, viewed, and written about today, yet are rarely addressed on the record or in print. For this roundtable discussion, I invited four leading scholars of experimental film—Erika Balsom, Erica Levin, Genevieve Yue, and Gregory Zinman—to respond to a series of questions about the history, present state, and future of the subfield of experimental film studies, both in terms of its disciplinary and theoretical contours, and in more on-the-ground, practical terms related to teaching, exhibition, and institutions.