Often called avant-garde (a military term meaning “advance guard”), experimental film, video, and new media are often non-narrative and non-realist, and emphasize human perception, intellectual puzzles, memories, and dreams. Experimental artists frequently work with a variety of formats and technologies, including film, video, and digital applications that can broadly be termed moving-image media.

Experimental films commonly reflect on the material specificity of the film medium and the conditions in which it is experienced by audiences—including such basic elements as film stock, sprocket holes, light, figure movement, editing patterns, and projection before an audience. Changes in technology bring changes in the form and object of these reflections.