The Histories of the New American Cinema Expositions in Europe, 1964 and 1967-1968: The Emergence and Diversity of European Experimental Film Cultures.

The main purpose of this project is to write the histories of the New American Cinema (NAC) Expositions in Europe during the years 1964 and 1967-68.

The work examines the production and circulation of the tours, understood as interfaces that connected the New American Cinema to local and national scenes across Europe.

Another objective is to explore the emerging European experimental film cultures of the 1960s, which hosted and interacted with the NAC Expositions.

A third and complementary purpose is to research into the possibilities of a transnational historiography of cinema.The project is based on extensive archival research.

Since the expositions toured around 14 different countries with screenings in more than 40 venues, we will collect different documents from various archives and collections (national or regional but also private, since the material produced by the different tours has not been systematically archived).

We will spend the first year gathering, organizing and analyzing the material obtained from the different sources. Second and third years will be devoted to writing and presenting the results.

Since the history of the expositions has not been written (neither its own nor the histories that underlay its European diffusion), the project’s importance consists in gathering new empirical findings and developing a transnational history of experimental cinema, one that reflects the multiple contexts and scenes that the NAC tours encountered in Europe.