The ideas and technology in experimental film stem from the rapid industrial and cultural changes associated with modernity. Modernist forms of art, from painting and music to design and architecture, reflected new human experiences of accelerated and disjunctive time, spatial juxtaposition, and fragmentation.

During the era of silent film a number of European avant-garde film movements, which had been influenced by experiments in other art forms such as painting and architecture, flourished. These included German expressionism, French impressionism, and Soviet constructivism. While many experimental filmmakers continued to produce silent films long after the introduction of synchronized sound in the late 1920s, some were immediately attracted to the formal possibilities of the soundtrack incorporating abstract music or sound effects into their films.

The countercultural impulses of many of the U.S.-based experimental filmmakers of the 1960s, such as Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, and Jack Smith, were reflected in the preferred term underground film. The American experimental film community established its own alternative exhibition theaters and distribution cooperatives. The exchanges fostered among artists and audiences profoundly influenced later generations of filmmakers working with film as personal expression.

After 1968, experimental cinema began to take on political characteristics. During the postwar period in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, innovative new wave cinemas challenged and energized commercial cinemas with their visions and techniques. Such experimentation was spurred by student unrest, Third World independence and decolonialization movements, and opposition to the American war in Vietnam. A prominent example was the call of Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino for a Third Cinema for the Third World, a cinema that would reject both commercial and art cinema in order to engage directly with the people.

Affordable small-gauge film formats such as Super-8 and Super 16 have long been popular with experimental filmmakers. However, new technologies such as portable video cameras and digital cameras facilitated the development of new types of artistic experimentation such as interactive artworks. The integration of computers and digital video in the 1990s blurred the lines between video and filmmaking, and the development of the Internet revolutionized the potential for interactive art and created a new venue for distribution of experimental artworks.