What are the Best Experimental Films of All Time?

In our Avant-Garde Experimental Filmmaking class, students are currently working directly with 16mm found footage from the 60s and 70s—physically manipulating the film itself through scratching, bleaching, hand-painting, and collage. This hands-on approach to cameraless filmmaking is rooted in the pre-digital era, when artists reimagined celluloid not just as a vessel for images, but as a canvas for expression. Long before timelines and editing software, experimental filmmakers pushed the medium