Student Film Academy

THE AVANT-GARDE, EXPERIMENTAL FILM & SURREALISM

INTRODUCTION

Since the invention of the moving image, filmmakers and artists have experimented with the form, pushing the boundaries of technology and film language. As well as commercial, mainstream cinema, films can be made as art. Typically these are shown in art galleries or in ‘underground’ settings and can reflect the inner meaning of the artist or used to experiment with film techniques to produce a dreamlike effect. Most avant-garde filmmaking makes demands on the viewer that they may not be used to from mainstream works – the viewer needs to work to gain meaning and understanding from what they see.

In this chapter we will examine key filmmakers who have utilised film as a medium for their art. We will examine several key avant-garde and experimental films and consider the relevance of this style of filmmaking in the modern era.

With much early avant-garde work widely available online, this topic will encourage students to experiment themselves and push the boundaries of their own technical skills and imaginations.

Note: Teachers should be aware that some of the works of avant-garde artists push not only the boundaries of form, but also of sexuality! Work with sexual content has been denoted with a * in this chapter.

TASK: Create a mood board from still images that you can find from these artists. 

AVANT-GARDE FILMMAKING

Avant-garde is roughly translated as the ‘advanced group’. In film, this refers to more experimental and artistic films that don’t follow conventional story structures. These are screened less widely than a blockbuster film but are certainly a valid form of filmmaking and one well-suited to the short film format.
Avant-garde absorbs several movements or filmmaking styles, including surrealism and Dada – the boundaries between such movements are a little blurred.

SOCIO-POLITICAL CONTEXT

Europe & USA: 1920s & 30s
As was the case with much early film history, the avant-garde film movement was linked closely to developments in the European art world. Following the traumas of World War I, artists wanted to challenge social conventions. This included active rebellion through the Dada movement, which offered a new worldview opposed to what artists felt caused WWI (later film movements like Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave were also rebellions against bourgeois conventions).

Dadaists began experimenting in film during the 1920s with Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Hans Richter being three key figures. Duchamp was a French-American painter and sculptor. Anemic Cinema (1926, 6 mins), a filmed sequence of spinning circles, is probably his best-known film work. He was a friend and influence on Man Ray, an American painter who lived much of his life in Paris. Both men were part of the Dada and surrealist movements.

Ray’s film work is seen as very influential on the avant-garde artists who followed, particularly those in the 1940s and 50s. His Retour a la Raison * (1923, 3 mins) plays with shadow, while Etoile de la Mer (1928, 15 mins) utilises diffusion and mirrors for its striking imagery.
Richter experimented with geometric shapes as well as superimposed images, editing in a rhythmic style, notably in Filmstudie (1925, 4 mins). His Ghosts Before Breakfast (1928, 6 mins) is memorable for its floating hats and quick editing; the original sound version was later destroyed by the Nazis.

As with most avant-garde works, these films have no clear narratives and demand the view’s participation to make sense of them and establish meaning. Stylistically, we can see a line drawn to these films from the lighting and angles of German Expressionism and the editing and rhythms of Soviet montage; The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Man With a Movie Camera can certainly be considered avant-garde films.

There were further key avant-gardes in Belgium, the UK, Poland and Czechoslovakia, among other countries. These ended due to a move to realism, as well as an exodus of artists from several countries due to the rise in Nazism.

UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929) Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí

Un Chien Andalou is perhaps the most famous surrealist short film. It was collaboration between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, who conceived the film by sharing each other’s dreams. Memorable in particular for its image of a straight-cut razor slitting open an eye, the film has been analysed for its dream logic and Freudian meanings, though its makers denied any meaning in its images.Buñuel is seen as one of cinema’s great directors. He went on to make many acclaimed feature films, a number of which had surrealist concepts and which mocked the upper classes, such as L’Age d’Or (another collaboration with Dalí), The Discreet Life of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel. 

Dali, memorable for his elaborate moustache, worked primarily in art and sculpture but did collaborate with Alfred Hitchcock to create striking dream sequences for Spellbound (1945). He also teamed with Walt Disney to conceive the short animation Destino – this was abandoned but later completed by Disney’s nephew Roy E. Disney and finally released in 2002.

Collective Audience Response

We’ve already seen with Arrival of the Train that audience responses can change over time and geographical location of the audience. However, one phenomenon of Audience Response is that it also can change based on members of the audience observing one another’s reactions to the film. 

As human beings we are attuned to the feelings and thoughts of others, which can impact our own perspectives, change our opinions, even depress or inspire us! We therefore sometimes take meaning from the way that we perceive other’s responses to art.

TASK: Watch Un Chien Andelou and answer these reflection questions as part of your film journal.

1. What is your response to the film? 

Research and read reviews such as the review by Roger Ebert.

2. a) What was the audience response at the time?

    b)What about your response – has it changed now you’ve shared other’s opinions? How?

3.Why is the collective response different from the individual response?

THE AVANT-GARDE DOCUMENTARY

As we learned in our Soviet Montage chapter, Dziga Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera was a hugely exciting and influential work of avant-garde documentary filmmaking. It use of overlapping images and rhythmic editing make it memorable even today – the film topped Sight & Sound magazine’s 2014 poll of the Greatest Documentaries of All-Time. Other notable city symphonies are Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), Études sur Paris (1928, 76 mins) and the short New York-based Manhatta (1921,11 mins) and Skyscraper Symphony (1929, 9 mins). Alex Barrett’s 2017 London Symphony was a return to this style of filmmaking.

Other avant-garde documentaries of note are the world-spanning Qatsi trilogy of films directed by Godfrey Reggio, which feature music score by Philip Glass. The films (Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (1982), Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation (1988) and Naqoyqatsi: Life as War (2002)) show striking imagery from around the world.  Ron Fricke’s Baraka (1992) and Samsara (2011) similarly show remarkable footage from countless different countries, with a more spiritual theme.

THE 1940S TO 1960S: USA

This period saw the prominence of several key American filmmakers. Mara Deren had a background in poetry and dance (rather than art,) while the formal elementa of her work suggests inspiration from German Expressionism and Soviet montage. She is best known for Meshes of the Afternoon (co-directed with her husband Alexander Hammid) – another avant-garde film that invokes the dream state and has memorable imagery.

Kenneth Anger made Fireworks* (1947) when he was just 17 years old – though it is thought that he was actually 20 when he made it. He declared himself one of America’s first openly gay filmmakers, and some of his work deals explicitly with his sexuality; he was arrested for obscenity for his production of Fireworks, though acquitted. Nine of his works form the Magick Lantern Cycle, while he is said to have been an influence on the later work of Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and John Waters.

Both Deren and Anger appeared in front of the camera in their best-known works.

By the 1960s, the avant-garde film movement in America was centred around New York. The art, dance and film scene was thriving, often as part of the counterculture movement, which rebelled against social norms and expectations. Films were sometimes screened in unusual locations, away from cinemas – these became known as underground films.

Lithuanian-born Jonak Mekas was a WWII evacuee, eventually landing in New York. He contributed writing to the Village Voice magazine and co-founded Film Culture, an influential magazine that explored avant-garde films and ran until 1996. Mekas co-founded The Film-Makers’ Cooperative in 1962, a non-profit organisation that championed avant-garde and experimental films and organised underground screenings – it still exists and now houses the world’s largest collection of avant-garde films. Mekas has been referred to as the Godfather of American Avant-Garde Cinema. Of his own works, Walden (1969, 177 mins) and Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972, 88 mins) are typical of the biographical tone of his best-known work, which often utilises home movie footage in a diary form.

Pop-artist Andy Warhol was famous for his paintings of American cultural objects, such as Coca-Cola bottles and Campbell’s soup cans, as well as celebrities of the time. Working at his Factory base, he also made several films that challenged the meaning of what a film was. This included Sleep (1963) a five-hour film that shows one man sleeping for its entirety, while Empire (1964) was a continuous fixed image of the Empire State building filmed for 8 hours! The mundane real-life imagery of Warhol’s work allows viewers to feel the passing of time and choose how long they can view the images for.

Jack Smith’s work of this period also pushed the boundaries of on-screen sexuality and like Anger, he found himself in legal trouble for some of his imagery.

In Europe, Le Groce’s Berlin Horse (1970) featured striking colour and rhythm, as well as reversing and speeding up footage. It screened in a two-screen and single-screen versions.

TASK: Split Screen Film

Create split screen video like Pharell music video

•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVNub204dOY&feature=youtu.be

NOTE: Need graphic examples of the split screen

The aim is for you to join images together using a simple split-screen.

This requires you to find or create short clips of objects that can be put side by side or on top of one another to create some kind of visual interaction or juxtaposition. 

Show your film to a partner - don't tell them anything about it - just observe their reactions, listen to their comments and answer their questions!

It might elicit any reaction from amusement to fear!

Then complete the following reflections:

1. a) What was their reaction to your film?

    b) How did their reaction differ from your expectations?

2. List three pairs of images that you joined together and explain your intended meaning.

MODERN ERA

THE UK

Avant-garde artists around the world have continues to challenge art’s limits. Particularly notable are the UK’s Steve McQueen and Sam Taylor-Johnson (previously known as Sam Taylor-Wood). Both of these British artists used photography and short video work and both eventually graduated to popular feature films – McQueen’s work includes Hunger and the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, while Taylor-Johnson directed John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy and the erotic drama Fifty Shades of Grey. Of their earlier works, Taylor-Johnson often used isolated humans in her frames. Her National Gallery installation David was a 67-minute shot of a sleeping David Beckham, perhaps an echo of Andy Warhol’s earlier work Sleep.

Some recent artists have manipulated films to show them in a new way. Douglas Gordon slowed down Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho so that it played over 24 hours (two frames per second) – viewers could study individual frames of the film, which last for two frames per second.

The Clock (2010 - by the American-Swiss Christian Marclay) travelled to art galleries around the world and has been hailed as a masterpiece. The piece is a 24-hour edit of shots of clocks from numerous films and of how the characters react to them and synchronised to the real-world time when it screens.

With innovations digital technology for filming and projection, avant-garde artists will continue to explore the boundaries of filmed material – one wonders where the future will take us!

Europe: 1960s-70s

The Feature Length Avant Garde Film

Filmmakers of the French New Wave have links to avant-garde filmmaking, though their work usually included clear narratives in their feature films. Jean-Luc Godard’s work is notable (see chapter XX), while Alain Resnais’ Last Year in Marienbad and the essay films of Chris Marker are some of the most notable avant-garde works of the period.

In Czechoslovakia, Very Chytilovà made the feature film Daisies – a key film in the Czech New Wave. The film is seen as a protest against Stalinism and treatment of women. Its two protagonists are both called Marie and the film makes clever use of colour. Animator Jan Svankmejer created many avant-garde short animations, which were shown in art galleries around the world. Svanmejer also made feature-length films, including a version of Alice in Wonderland (Alice, 1980) and Little Otik (2000), both of which blended live action with stop-motion animation.

In Japan, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes (1964) sees a schoolteacher trapped in a strange, inescapable sand quarry. It was one of Andrei Tarkovsky’s ten favourite films and saw its director nominated for the Best Director Academy Award – a rare achievement for a non-English language film.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror (1975) is one of the finest examples of a memory-inspired avant-garde feature film. A non-narrative musing on his memories and dreams.

Most notable all is David Lynch. His surreal, dream-like Eraserhead (1980) is one of the most visually (and sonically)-arresting films every made and was filmed over several years. A painter before he became a filmmaker, Lynch’s films are puzzles that ask the audience to find their own solutions. Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Drive * (2001) have helped his surrealist style become part of film language – films can be referred to as Lynchian.

THE MODERN ERA

1980s onwards

There are many notable avant-grade filmmakers working in the modern film world. One is Canada’s Guy Maddin, whose The Forbidden Room (2015, co-directed with Evan Johnson) is made up of several short tales filmed in a variety of styles. It was released theatrically in the US, UK and Canada and was a critically-acclaimed success. Maddin has also made many striking short films, including The Heart of the World (2000, 6 mins), which uses the style of Soviet propaganda films.

In the UK, Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993) is often considered his most interesting and powerful work. Visually, it consists only of an unchanging blue screen, while the music, sound and voices put across his experiences of AIDS – the film was released just a few months before his death in 1994.

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman’s masterpiece is Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, 201 minutes). The film, made with an all-female crew, shows its title character in a series of long takes as she cooks, cleans and then has sex with male visitors. The slow pace serve to show her routine, which gradually breaks down and descends into murder.

Gus van Sant has made several mainstream films but has also directed several interesting avant-garde features, notably Gerry and Last Days, which hark back to the work of Warhol with their long takes and uneventful narratives. Van Sant won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Elephant, an exploration of the Columbine school shooting.

Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul is another Palme d’or winner, for his Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010, 113 mins). It is part of a larger multi-media project called Primitive. Known (helpfully) as Joe, the director is a prolific maker of short films and video art.

Danish director Lars von Trier experimented with the rules of cinema as part of the Dogme 95 movement (see chapter XX). Von Trier’s work is frequently provocative and challenges the viewer with its imagery and themes. Inspired by the theatre of Bertolt Brecht (who challenged audiences by making them more aware that they were watching a play), von Trier filmed Dogville and Manderlay digitally on a stage that had white taped markings to represent different buildings and rooms.

THE LEGACY OF THE AVANT-GARDE

Countless narrative feature films explore the dream-state that we associate with surrealism. Dream sequences from Wild Strawberries and 8½ certainly owe a debt to the surrealists of the early 20th century. Modern filmmakers like Michel Gondry, Roy Andersson and James Bond film title sequences.

Are films like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Inception avant-garde?