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In the Summer 1961 edition of Film Quarterly, Stan Vanderbeek was the first person to refer to experimental filmmaking as the “underground.” A filmmaker himself, Vanderbeek was frustrated that his work and the films of his peers — such as Stan Brakhage, Hilary Harris, Robert Breer and Robert Frank — was not being considered as serious art by the broader cinematic culture.

Eventually, the term “underground film” would become part of the regular movie vernacular, but was it adopted slowly or quickly after its first appearance in 1961?

Jonas Mekas‘s “Movie Journal” column in the Village Voice was the main organ promoting experimental and avant-garde cinema in the early 1960s. A survey of the column from that time period has shown that Mekas did not use the term “underground film” very frequently.

At approximately the same time of the Film Quarterly issue, Mekas devoted a column on May 4, 1961 to three filmmakers. Mekas began the column with:

Stan Vanderbeek,...

In a letter dated June 1, 1962, the newly formed Film-Makers’ Cooperative offered their first list of films that were available to rent. Fourteen filmmakers were represented.

The need to form a cooperative distribution center for what were then called “independent filmmakers” was made in a series of meetings in the autumn of 1960. The meetings were organized by Jonas Mekas and Lew Allen; and included New York City-based filmmakers such as Robert Frank, Shirley Clarke, Adolfas Mekas, Ben Carruthers, Peter Bogdanovich and others. These informal meetings would eventually coalesce into the formation of the New American Cinema Group.

On September 30, 1960, Jonas Mekas presented The First Statement of the New American Cinema Group manifesto. One of the items in the manifesto stated that filmmaker Emile de Antonio was entrusted with the task of forming the distribution center, although there’s no record of de Antonio’s actual involvement beyond that.

The distribution center...