Week 8 - Avant Garde

ARTIST FILM, AVANT-GARDE FILM,
EXPERIMENTAL AND NON-FICTION
INTERNATIONAL FILM PRACTICE THAT EXPLORES CINEMA'S CAPACITY TO

MANIPULATE LIGHT, MOTION, SPACE, AND TIME, AND/OR
EXPRESS THE FILMMAKER'S PERSONAL ARTISTIC VISION.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF AVANT-GARDE FILM
• While 99.9% of films and videos adhere to forms that come from novels and theater (i.e.
the three act structure, character as causal agents, protagonists with goals and journeys),
there has always been, and now more than ever thanks to digital technologies and the
internet, a sector at the margins that tends to focus on the medium itself for inspiration.
• And also, there are artists who use the medium to comment on mainstream culture and
the cinema cinema's tendency to reinforce dominant ideologies.
• https://nofilmschool.com/2013/09/brief-history-experimental-cinema
GEORGE EASTMAN
• In 1889, the first commercial transparent roll film, perfected by Eastman

and his research chemist, was put on the market. The availability of this
flexible film made possible the development of Thomas Edison's motion
picture camera in 1891
DICKSON and EDISON

• 1891: First Projected MOVING PICTURE
Edison and Dickson invented a motion picture camera
and a peephole viewing device called the Kinetoscope.
They were first shown publicly in 1893 and the following
year the first Edison films were exhibited commercially.
LUMIERE BROTHERS
• They patented an improved cinematograph

• Created perforations for film
• The Lumière brothers saw film as a novelty and had withdrawn
from the film business in 1905. They went on to develop the
first practical photographic colour process.
• Lumiere Brothers – first films https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ3tCzVBUS4
HISTORY
• Even in the silent film era, films were shown with sounds
• "Double-system" sound used independent cameras and sound recorders
• The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid- to late 1920s, known as
"talkies," were exclusively shorts. The first feature film originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer, released
in October 1927, made with Vitaphone and was a major hit. Sound-on-film, however, would soon become the
standard for talking pictures.
• By the early 1930s, the talkies were a global phenomenon. In the United States,
they helped secure Hollywood's position as one of the world's most powerful
cultural/commercial centers of influence.
THE FIRST EXPERIMENT: EDITING
• 1903 – Life of a Fireman - first edited d film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ym7-QW_GWo
• THE CUTTING EDGE _ MOVIE EDITING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U76MBDKQe8s
FIRST SFX
MELIES – A Trip to the Moon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLVChRVfZ74
20 YEARS LATER …
• During the 1920s, after CINEMA had become a popular mass kind of entertainment , the same
experimental impulse arose to break with the accepted and conventional ways of putting images
together.
• PLUS WAR …
• And ART was also experiencing experimentation
• Alternative to conventional approaches
• A new era of experimentation in film began –
• French films combined narrative experimentation, rhythmic editing and camerawork, and an emphasis
on character subjectivity. – JUMP CUTS
EXPERIMENTAL FILM, EXPERIMENTAL
CINEMA OR AVANT-GARDE CINEMA
• A mode of filmmaking that re-evaluates cinematic conventions and expectations, and explores alternatives to traditional
narrative structure or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other
disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from new technologies.
• The vast majority of experimental works have been produced on very low budgets with a minimal crew or a single person
and are either self-financed or supported through small grants.
• Experimental filmmakers generally begin as amateurs, and some used experimental films as a springboard into commercial
film making or academic positions. The aim of experimental filmmaking is usually to render the personal vision of an
artist, to push boundaries of how we perceive and know reality, or to promote interest in new technology rather than to
entertain or to generate revenue, as is the case with commercial films.
DADAISM, SURREALISM
• DADAISM is an artistic movement in modern art that started around World

War I. Its purpose was to ridicule the meaninglessness of the modern world.
Its peak was 1916 to 1922, and it influenced surrealism, pop art, and punk
rock. It went against the standards of society.
• The proponents of SURREALISM endeavor to mix up the differences of
conscious and unconscious thought through
writing and painting by using irrational
juxtaposition of images.
LUIS BUNUEL AND SALVADOR DALI
Un Chien Andalou - Luis Buñuel (1929)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iLDtD-wr7Q
”The marriage of the film image to the poetic image, creating a new reality...scandalous
and subversive".
Un Chien Andalou has no plot in the conventional sense of the word. The chronology of the film is disjointed, jumping
from the initial "once upon a time" to "eight years later" without the events or characters changing. It uses dream
logic in a flow that can be described in terms of then-popular Freudian free association, presenting a series of tenuously
related scenes.
SOVIET
• Man with a Movie Camera, 1929

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWtNKlRBn98
• MONTAGE
MAYA DEREN
• A Ukrainian-born American experimental filmmaker and important promoter of the
avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s.
• Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid is considered
by some to be one of the first important American experimental films. It provided a
model for self-financed 16 mm production and distribution, one that was soon
picked up by Cinema 16 and other film societies. Just as importantly, it established an
aesthetic model of what experimental cinema could do. Meshes had a dream-like
feel that hearkened to Jean Cocteau and the Surrealists, but equally seemed
personal, new and American.
• https://vimeo.com/218042283
THE LOGIC OF EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH –
THE ROAD OF ALL CINEMA
• PLAY with the medium itself

• Go against convention
• PUSH boundaries
• Make viewers uncomfortable
• No need for narrative logic
• Questions and opposes structures of the day
AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE
American cinema changed dramatically over the course of

the 1960s, during which time the scope, shape, and content
of film was rigorously challenged. Eager to break away from
the domination of narrative features of this period, film
artists used fresh, renegade styles to explore both the
structure of edited composition and the lyrical nature of
celluloid images.
ARTISTS FROM OTHER FORMS FIND THEIR WAY
TO FILM
• INTERSTED IN OPTICS: Ernie Gehr, Rose Lowder or Jodie Mack (lenses and
flicker effect and animation).
• Artists can make personal and political statements such as
• Robert Florey's Life and Death of a Hollywood Extra or
• Su Friedrich's biographical allegory Sink or Swim 1928 or
• Jesse MacClean's I'm in Pittsburgh and it's Raining.
•
ART FILMS
• PERSONAL
• ANGST
• INDIVIDUAL VISION
FILMS GETTING FURTHER AND FURTHER FROM
NARRATIVE
“Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which
does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of
perception…. How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye?” —Stan Brakhage, Metaphors on Vision
In the 1960s RENEGADE FILMMAKERS were inventing new ways of making films and fresh avenues for getting them
distributed and seen. It was a seismic movement built on Maya Deren. Kenneth Anger, and the surrealists … threw out all
the rules.
NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO
• STAN BRAKHAGE Mothlight 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaGh0D2NXCA

CURRENT AND NEAR CURRENT
• ENERGI! 2007 https://vimeo.com/5034957

• The film won multiple awards at film festivals and is a wonderful
example of film as art for art's sake. Fleisch created the work by
exposing photo paper to electricity and then making a sort of flip
book. The film is almost a science experiment, but it's also art, and
is a way for him to explore electricity in a tangible, visual way. The
film finds beauty in something ordinarily hidden.
THE HAND OF THE ARTIST
• Jaaji Approx
• http://www.skyhopinka.com/jaaji-approximately
• DESKTOP Documentary: TRANSFORMERS: the premake

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD3K1eWXI54
• STEMS
Ainslie Henderson
Experimental about Art in Puppetryhttps://www.shortoftheweek.com/2018/04/26/stems/
• Tearaway
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE8n5wZ-m2A

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ARTIST FILM, AVANT-GARDE FILM,

EXPERIMENTAL AND NON-FICTION

INTERNATIONAL FILM PRACTICE THAT EXPLORES CINEMA'S CAPACITY TO

• In 1889, the first commercial transparent roll film, perfected by Eastman

DICKSON and EDISON

• They patented an improved cinematograph

• 1903 – Life of a Fireman - first edited d film

• THE CUTTING EDGE _ MOVIE EDITING

MELIES – A Trip to the Moon

• DADAISM is an artistic movement in modern art that started around World

Un Chien Andalou - Luis Buñuel (1929)

• Man with a Movie Camera, 1929

• PLAY with the medium itself

American cinema changed dramatically over the course of

NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO

• STAN BRAKHAGE Mothlight 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaGh0D2NXCA

• ENERGI! 2007 https://vimeo.com/5034957

• DESKTOP Documentary: TRANSFORMERS: the premake

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