Several technical functions in film and video are either overlooked or taken for granted. One of the most important of these is the frame, especially in the cinema context where it functions as an image container, a subsistent, invisible barrier or cut-off between the screen space and its surrounding darkness. Several filmmakers have tested the givenness of the framing edges—it's called the frame but it’s really a mask—either by incorporating them into the work or by making them disappear. The strategy of incorporation, in the form of frames within frames, can generate a partial mise-en-abyme (Droste Effect), or gesture towards it.

This essay discusses examples of film and video work by artist-filmmakers, in which the frame is variously incorporated into the image as part of it, redescribed or dismantled through a process of material reconfiguration. The essay begins with a key historical example, Hans Richter’s 35mm film Rhythm 21 (1921-23), moving on to more recent works, including William Raban’s seminal work 2’ 45” and Steve Partridges’ video work Monitor 1, thence to more recent examples by Bruce McClure, Cathy Rogers, Simon Payne and the author. The essay is intended to show how the frame is essential in the process of meaning formation in both film and, to a lesser extent, painting, and how the work of the artists discussed challenges the givenness that afflicts the photographic image. To this end, much of the work discussed is non-representational, though not all of it.