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Experimental Film Society (EFS) is an Irish company dedicated to the production and screening of experimental cinema. It grew out of the former Experimental Film Society collective which was formed and managed by the company’s founder and director, Rouzbeh Rashidi. EFS concentrates on nurturing film projects which reflect the distinctive cinematic vision that it developed over its eighteen year existence as a not-for-profit collective. EFS produces films that are distinguished by an uncompromising devotion to personal, experimental cinema. These films adopt an exploratory, often lyrical approach to filmmaking and foreground mood, atmosphere, visual rhythms, and the sensory interplay of sound and image. EFS is at the centre of a new wave of Irish experimental filmmaking. EFS also curates screenings of experimental film, mainly by filmmakers and artists associated with it, both nationally and internationally.

History
EFS was founded in 2000 in Tehran, Iran by Rouzbeh Rashidi and has been based in Dublin, Ireland since 2004. As a film collective, it produced, co-produced, or otherwise assisted in the production of over fifty no-budget or very low-budget feature-length films and 500 short films. In 2011, EFS began to organise screenings, performances and talks, an initiative which has since resulted in over one hundred events all around the globe.

Production
Experimental Film Society produced, co-produced, or otherwise assisted in the production of over fifty no-budget or very low-budget feature-length films and 500 short films. In 2011, EFS began to organise screenings, performances and talks, an initiative which has since resulted in over one hundred events all around the globe. In mid-2017, EFS became a company limited by guarantee to facilitate the increasingly ambitious and professionally funded projects it now focuses on.

Distribution
Since 2011, Experimental Film Society has developed a successful bespoke system for distributing our films. It began with organising screenings ourselves, mainly in Ireland. Screenings not only of our own films, but also of work by likeminded filmmakers and organisations from across the globe. This led to several fruitful exchanges and collaborations which have allowed our films to travel to the right audiences, and valuable connections to be made. It is through these connections that our films have become widely known, and invitations to present work at cinemas and festivals worldwide multiply. EFS is constantly producing new films and has an archive of several hundred films built up over its existence since the year 2000.

Luminous Void Film Festival
Category:Film production companies Category:Film collectives

Luminous Void: Experimental Film Society Documents
Luminous Void: Experimental Film Society Documents, edited by Rouzbeh Rashidi and Maximilian Le Cain, chronicles the history of Experimental Film Society (EFS) by compiling a series of essays, interviews and manifestos that set out and explore the ideas that drive and emerge from EFS filmmaking. It includes new texts by renowned film critic Adrian Martin, and by Alice Butler & Daniel Fitzpatrick, the curatorial team behind aemi (artists and experimental moving image) who describe the book thus: “This is the kind of book which belongs in the homes of artists,  filmmakers, critics, programmers, curators and fans, encountered years from now well thumbed and returned to again and again; as much a source of inspiration or a space for reflection on cinema and its ineffable power as a manual for uncompromised creative practice.”

Luminous Void: Twenty Years of Experimental Film Society
Luminous Void: Twenty Years of Experimental Film Society celebrates the prolific work and achievements of this unlikely group of creative outsiders who banded together to challenge the norms and limitations of filmmaking in Ireland and beyond. Featuring contributions by noted critics and curators from across the globe, it examines the ideas and impulses that animate EFS as well as the practices of many of the filmmakers associated with it. It includes texts by Adrian Martin, Nadin Mai, Matt Packer, Pluck Projects, Sebastian Wiedemann, Sarah Hayden & Paul Hegarty, Azadeh Jafari, Vahid Mortazavi, Zulfikar Filandra and expert EFS scholar Nikola Gocić. These writings provide a guidebook to the imposingly vast ‘luminous void’ of Experimental Film Society cinema.

Releases
Over the past decade, a group of underground filmmakers has emerged to define a new and visionary strain of filmmaking. Under the banner of Experimental Film Society, the filmmakers associated with this Irish-based company have forged a defiantly personal and marginal cinema that is fast becoming recognized as “an important new direction” (Donal Foreman, Estudios Irlandeses) in Irish film. Sharing an exploratory approach to filmmaking where films emerge from the interplay of sound, image and atmosphere rather than traditional storytelling techniques, their work has been singled out for its radical formal qualities and poetic sensibility. Made with low or no budgets, this is filmmaking at its most challenging and independent.