Underground film
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The first use of the term "underground film" occurs in a 1957 essay by American film critic Manny Farber, "Underground Films." Farber uses the term to refer to B-movie auteurs like John Ford who made artistically valid works essentially on the sly while seeming to churn out workaday products.
In the late 1950s, "underground film" began to be used for pockets of early independent filmmakers operating first in San Francisco and New York, and soon in other cities around the world as well. The movement was typified by more experimental filmmakers working at the time like Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, Ken Jacobs, Jack Smith, George Kuchar, and Bruce Conner.
By the late 1960s, the movement represented by these filmmakers had matured, and some began to distance themselves from the countercultural, psychedelic connotations of the word, preferring terms like avant-garde or experimental to describe their work.
Through 70s and 80s, however, "underground film" would still be used to refer to the more countercultural fridge of independent cinema. The term was embraced most emphatically by Nick Zedd and the other filmmakers associated with the New York based Cinema of Transgression of the late 70s to early 90s.
In the early 90s, the legacy of the Cinema of Transgression carried over into a new generation, who would equate "underground cinema" with transgressive, ultra-low-budget filmmaking created in defiance of both the commercialized versions of independent film offered by newly wealthy distributors like Miramax and New Line, as well as the institutionalized experimental film canonized at major musuems. This spirit defined the early years of underground film festivals (like the New York Underground Film Festival and others), zines like Film Threat, as well as the works of filmmakers like Craig Baldwin, John Moritsugu, and Bruce La Bruce.
By the late 1990s and early 00s, the term had become blurred again, as the work at underground festivals began to blend with more formal experimentation, and the divisions that had be stark ones less than a decade earlier now seemed much less so. If the term is used at all, it connotes a form of very low budget independent filmmaking, with perhaps trangressive content, or a low-fi analog to post-punk music cultures.