Hollis Frampton

Emerging from the New York Avant-garde film community of the 1960s, experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton was a key figure in developing structuralism, a branch of film theory that investigates and challenges film as a form. Structuralism undermines film’s traditional narratives, instead using the consecutive juxtaposition of shots to form and shape meaning, a technique that Frampton believed is the essence of filmmaking. As well as being intrigued by philosophy and literature and how they shaped the medium of film, Frampton had an interest in computer science – an emerging field in the 1970s to which he significantly contributed – and this bled into his work: Frampton’s films borrowed and were structured around concepts from mathematics and science.