OUGD401 - Lecture Notes: Avant - Garde Cinema


-  In opposition to mainstream cinema - set out to be the opposite - a critical attack on Hollywood. 

-       No plot or coherent narrative - non linear / non figurative.

-       Requires you to create a meaning, acting as an active spectator.

-       Difficult to define – experimental and different types of it.

-       “You can’t describe pornography, you just know it when you see it” – similar with avant garde film.

-       - “Un Chien Andalou” – Dir Luis Bunuel / Salvador Dali (1929) – still got a plot to it – as shown with the bicycle scene – made up through free association.

-       Mathew Barney – Cremaster 3 (2002) – Filmed in the Guggenheim in New York.

-       Oskar Fischinger – Sprials (1926) – “like an assault on your senses” – playing with optics – see colour as you fill in the blanks – hypnotic and you become aware of yourself seeing.

-       James Whitney – Lapis (1966) – A film at the same speed as a brain wave – psychedelic – focus on both sensory processes and cosmic role – the universe and our role within.

-       Stan Brakhage (Richard’s favourite) – Black Ice (1994) – One of the most important avant garde film makers of the 20th century.

-       Mothlight – usage of a dead moth embedded into the film.

sdWindow Water Baby Moving - The birth of his own son - an attempt to make a hypnogogic vision - the state between waking and sleeping. 

Andy Warhol's Empire - !0 and half hour film of the Empire State Building

Art schools should be places where rules should be ripped up and thrown out the window. These films look at the medium from a fresh perspective. They are anti Hollywood and anti commercial, meaning they hold integrity.  They are rarely shown since they make no money. 

How can I radicalise my own discipline? 














Wednesday, 23 January 2013
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