- Set out to be in opposition to mainstream cinema
- Non linear / non figurative / non narrative
- Open meaning rather than closed meaning
- Requires a different kind of spectatorship by allowing you to create your own meaning
- Avant-Garde films are considerably difficult to define "you can't describe pornography, but you can definitely see it"
'Un Chien Andalou' (1929) Dir. Luis Bunuel
Salvador Dali helped to create the film.
There are loads of readings of the film where people attempt to create a meaning for it.
'Cremaster 3' (2002) Matthew Barney
The Cremaster Cycle is the process of lowering the testicles as you grow into an adult.
Surreal and non-linear film.
Filmed in the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
'Spirals' (1926) Oskar Fischinger
Early abstract Avant-Garde cinema.
"like an assault on your senses"
Playing with the optics and disrupting the process of seeing, making your brain try and fill in the blanks and add colour to the black and white spirals of the film.
'Lapis' (1966) James Whitney
1960's Bohemian Squat.
Supposed to be a film that works at the same speed as a human brainwave when you're nicely at rest.
Links to your thought process when you're "chilling out".
Psychedelic patterns with bohemian/indian music playing in the background.
Quite a cosmic vibe about it.
'Black Ice' (1994) Stan Brakhage
Romantic Avant-Garde cinema.
Entirely abstract and radical.
Hand-made 'animal process'.
One of the most important, radical, abstract film makers in the 20th century.
'Mothlight' (1963) Stan Brakhage
Leaves and dead moth chopped up and arranged together to make a film.
'Window Water Baby Moving' Stan Brakhage
Movie of the birth of his son, bit "full on".
Brakhage calls his film making an attempt to create a "hypnogogic" vision. Hypnogogia is the state between waking up and sleeping.
'Empire' Andy Warhol
10 and a half hour film of the empire state building.
Static camera filming the building.
In Richard's opinion, art schools are the starting ground for radicalism. This is what all these films tend to do. They take the idea of cinema and jettison it. They look at the media from a fresh view, and are anti commercial. Because the films aren't about making money, they never get shown in cinemas etc as no one will pay to see them.
