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20 Essential Films For An Introduction To Avant-Garde Cinema

22 December 2014 | Features, Film Lists | by Emiliano Serrano Lara
Avant-garde is a term used to refer a series of manifestations that openly

depart from the canons of the Status Quo. Though the eagerness to innovate
can be traced through different stages of history, the emergence of
Avant-garde manifestations occurred at the final stage of 19th century.
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Those manifestations met a golden age of development as well as periods of

decadence and invigorating refreshment through 20th century. As they
changed the standard ways of approaching different phenomena, their
influence can be traced in our days.
Avant-garde manifestations gravitate under the tense relationship between
art and ideology; a space that not always leaves them in a good position. As
a consequence, since their development, Avant-garde manifestations have
faced the risk of falling in a snobbish discourse about creativity or in a
manifest ideology with a lot to say but nothing to produce.
The avant-garde interest in Cinema can be traced in the modernism
obsession with photography. If the depiction of reality was Arts main role, Art
was falling short in front of a camera. Though the positions of Avant-garde
manifestations at this issue vary, most of them found in photography and
especially in Cinema a suitable media to divorce Art from its institutional
canons.
The amount of films regarded as Avant-garde is huge. Today, as a term
applied to films, Avant-garde is used in a more open sense to refer all movie
experimentally produced. Moving through the limits of narrative, time and
technique, those movies are a matter of great interest to Cinema students
and dilettantes.
The next is a list of twenty Avant-garde films. It doesnt cover all the big
names of Avant-garde Cinema, nor does it take account of all its essential
titles. Its intention is merely to work as brief introduction to the richness of
Avant-garde Cinema.
20. Quick Billy (Bruce Baillie, 1971)
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Arguably an allegory about the power of change between life and death,
Quick Billy is perhaps Bruce Baillies most personal work. Filmed in the
middle of Baillies struggle with the hepatitis that whipped Lou Gottliebs
Morningstar Ranch, Quick Billy depicts The Tibetan Book of the Death, a
mortuary text about the stages crossed by the soul until its renaissance.
Quick Billy is structured in four reels marked by the complex but tasteful
supplement relation between visual impoverishment and technical virtuosity;
the recourse that made Baillie a groundbreaking figure of the 60s
Avant-garde cinema.
The first three reels constitute an exploration to the stages of death and
afterlife. The fourth one, in which Bailles synthesize not only the film but the
vision he pursued from his early works by mocking such exploration, is a
kitsch silent Western.
19. Blue (Derek Jarman, 1993)
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Derek Jarmans testament, Blue, is an intimate autobiographical experiment

composed by a single shot of a saturated blue screen interwoven by a
soundtrack.
Though Blue focuses on its soundtrack, which presents Jarmans
impressions of his life, the films hardly elusive blue screen actually works as
a symbolic counterpart of Jarmans melancholic retrospective.
18. Anemic Cinema (Marcel Duchamp, 1926)
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An ambiguous but playful exercise from the overall acclaimed genius of

Marcel Duchamp, who upon his time escaped from every defining canon
including the Avant-garde manifestations themselves, Anemic Cinema is an
experimental succession of animated drawings, rotoreliefs as Duchamp
fondly called them, alternated with alliterations held by nine revolving disks.
Perhaps there is no better way to describe Anemic Cinema than appealing to
its title. Duchamp deliberately weakened the mainstream recourse of the
Cinema of his time to arise the viewers imagination in order to fulfill their
neurotic and widely criticized necessity of unity and completeness.
17. Orpheus (Jean Cocteau, 1950)
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Part of Cocteaus Orphic Trilogy, Orpheus is a surrealist update about

Orpheus, the musician that, according to a Greek widespread myth,
descended to the underworld in an attempt of bringing his loved one back
from the death.
Orpheus is widely respected due to Cocteaus poetic taste but especially due
to the simplicity of the technical means by which he represents the films
mythical world. For instance, he approaches his shots to show his characters
pass into the underworld through mirrors and, running those shot backwards,
he carries on their return to life.
The Orphic trilogy is an exploration upon the complexity arisen between artist
and his work. Orpheus is the central part of it.
16. Seren Velocity (Ernie Gehr, 1970)
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Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art in 2006, Seren Velocity is an algid

point in the development of structuralist cinema. The film consists of nothing
more than two shots of an office hallway, meticulously carried to explore the
spectatorship experience as few films have done.
Seren Velocity entirely lacks of plot, its success lies on its virtuous treatment
of movement; a treatment in which some have found a major one about
cinematographic ontology.
15. La Jete (Chris Marker, 1962)
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Based upon the films narrative context, entirely dependent of a series of still
optically printed photographs, Chris Marker referred to La Jete, an obligated
title for sci-fi lovers, as a photo novel.
Departing from a post-apocalyptic plotline, La Jete follows a few World War
Three survivors attempts to send a traumatized man back in time to the
pre-war world for supplies.
The legacy of La Jete can be traced from musical video clips to major
blockbusters. Its detriment of movement sequences got it a Prix Jean Vigo
for short film.
14. Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (Shuji Terayama, 1971)
Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets is one of Japans most valuable
contributions to cinematography. Shuji Terayama consciously experimented
with non linear sequences, color filters and psychedelic scenarios in an
aggressive attempt to deliver the audiences a different filmic experience that
some had regarded as anarchical.
A gem from the counterculture, Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets
is an acid depiction of staggering actuality about alienation and other
consequences of social conformism.
Its plotline follows a young mans desire to achieve something different for
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him instead of hugging the life his family members are happy with in a wide
materialist Japan.
13. Daisies (Vera Chytilov, 1966)
Paradigm of the Czech New Wave Cinema and regarded as a Prague Spring
herald, Daisies is Vera Chytilovs most well known work.
The film is a politically incorrect Dadaist absurd exercise that, unlike many
related titles, easily traps the spectator in its game due to its relatively easy
accessibility and the playfulness of its anarchism.
Daises follows Marie I and Marie II, two nervy women carrying a series of
unorthodox pranks as an attempt to understand a world they dont belong in.
12. Dog Star Man (Stan Brakhage, 1961-1964)
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Dog Star Man is a series of short lyrical films directed by Stan Brakhage who
is perhaps Americas most hailed Avant-garde film maker in the early 60s.
Dominated by a varying superposition of sequences, Dog Star Man tastefully
plays with the canons of the standard linear narrative. The result is an
experience that few films set upon standard narratives have been able to
offer.
Highly dynamical, Dog Star Mans proposal is mainly dominated by an
unorthodox but unitary exploitation of colors and textures surrounding its
stories.
11. Ballet mcanique (Fernand Lger and Dudley Murphy, 1924)
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Ballet mcanique, Fernand Lger and Dudley Murphys short art film, has
been described as the Avant-garde cinematographic quintessence. Thought
Cubism, especially in its ulterior developments, can be postulated as the
films main guideline, it is true that, from the dream-like narrative to the
fascination with mechanisms, guidelines from Avant-garde manifestations
other than Cubism can be traceable in Ballet mcanique.
Projected as a kaleidoscopic collage, Ballet mecnique is a cheerful
succession of seven self-sufficient sequences that broke with every
conventional canon set upon its time by defying continuity, celebrating the
spontaneous game of imagination and mocking the civilized mans obsession
with order.
Today, Ballet mecnique is an obligated reference for the celebrators of the
Avant-gardes invigorating innovation.
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1 Comment
Penelope
There are some of these list that are not Avant-Garde Cinema,
Intolerance, Eraserhead and Pierrot le fou are some examples! I wish
that someone with a better knowledge have done this list!
The 20 Most Hauntingly Beautiful

Black and
Avatar
The
modern fllm "A Field in England"
belongs
The 20 Most Controversial

Documentaries of All Time
Avatar
What about
Earthlings?
The 12 Best Winona Ryder Movies

You Need To Watch
The 18 Best American Remakes of

Foreign Movies
Avatar
I think it's time
for that Winona Ryder
comeback.
Avatar An interesting list with

some genuinely good American
films
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