Writing the Histories of the New American Cinema Expositions in Europe

The New American Cinema Group (NACG) organized various tours across Europe throughout the 1960s. Known as the New American Cinema Expositions, these became instrumental in the conceptualization of the NAC and would lay foundations for emerging historiographies of experimental film. Applying historian Allan Megill's three concepts of historiography-affirmative, critical, and didactic-we argue that most of experimental film history has been either affirmative or didactic. Hence, based on extensive archival research, this article sets out to accomplish a critical historiography. We discuss the organization, presentation, development, and reception of three stops of the NAC expositions-the Festival dei Due Mondi (Festival of Two Worlds) in Spoleto, Italy (1961), Moderna Museet in Stockholm (1964), and the Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek in West Berlin (1967). Our analysis highlights the discrepancies and differences among the shows and permits us to question and problematize the narrative and historiography of the NAC.