avant-garde, experimental, surreal film

It's almost, not always, true that if it's a really cutting edge film, no one will know the name of it because no one will have seen it. Non-representational films, for ex., esp. animation created by scratching and coloring, that "liberate" the filmmaker and which are the first days homework in any film school animation class. "Look, continues images don't show up as continuous images. The 24 f.p.m. standard is a compromise between flicker and the appearance of motion created by the persistence of vision." "Oh, wow."

Cinema is a rules-based artform. For the most part, these visual and narrative conventions are liberating, rather than restrictive. Visually and stylistically renegade filmmakers sometimes are useful when they develop a new technique that can be expropriated by more mainstream filmmakers.

But this is nothing new. The art for art's sake movement is relatively new, the product of the industrial revolution giving a lot more people a lot more money and leisure time. Great art has always been popular art. Raffaele and Leonardo were sought after not because they were great artists but because they were popular and each pope/prince had to keep up with the Joneses.

"Every picture tells a story, don't it."

Dead Man, while not being experimental or avant-garde, is also one of my favourite films of all time.

Would "Cabeza de Vaca" qualify?

Mark cuts to the heart of it all.

Chantal Akerman - "News From Home"
Jean-Luc Godard - "Weekend"
Abbas Kiarostami - "The Wind Will Carry Us"
Andrei Tarkovsky - "Nostalghia"

Also, the treated street car film mentioned above may be Bruce Bailey's (I think that's his name) film Castro Street, which consisted of very colorful images sliding across the screen.

bad movie: pretty much any experimental film. For example the quay brothers "institute benjementa". It's just too complicated and it's black and white. Which makes it suck. Switching scenes too slowly completely ruins the flow of the story. A nice predictable and simple story line is always better.

rowr!!

resnais mon oncle d'amérique
Luis Bunuel The Phantom of Liberty
debord la société du spectacle
Nagisa Oshima In The Realm Of The Senses
michael snow so is this

That's the person I was trying to think of in my original post to this thread. The film that features rapidly alternating perspectives from within a hallway. It has been bothering me ever since (particularly as I'd seen the film in question multiple times), and it came to me tonight.

Serene Velocity. Great film. Anyone know this one?

The Nine Lives of Thomas Katz
...where end of the world in coming to London, windows speak and the subway has it's own gods.

Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid
...where the boys from KLF burn a million pounds of their own money. It really happened.

Don't Touch the White Woman!
...where the famous battle between general Custer and the Indians takes place in modern-day Paris. Marcello Mastroianni plays Custer, and Catherine Deneuve is his mistress.

i thought the K foundation thing had been officially discredited now?

What do you mean by that? I heard Drummond & Cauty have destroyed all the existing copies of the film, but nothing about it being discredited.

which surprises me. i kind of thought he had gone through with it. seemed like that kind of bloke from his writing. [naive fool that i am]

every once in a while i check amazon..i don't know how to start a request or a waiting list for a release, so all i do is hope..

now, the only maya deren- related dvd out at this point is the excellent documentary "in the mirror with maya deren" on zeitgiest films.

George Landow - On the Marriage Broker Joke...

how about "Holy Mountain" by Jodorowsky

# Hairspray (1988)
# Desperate Living (1977)
# Female Trouble (1974)
# Pink Flamingos (1972)
# Multiple Maniacs (1970)

The Color of Pomegranates -Sergei Paradjanov

WR Mysteries of the Organism -Dusan Makavejev
Sweet Movie - Dusan Makavejev

(under no circumstances read _any_ plot summary of Sweet Movie before watching the film)

http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/33/makavejev.html

All Bunuel after 1960 is worth watching at least once, also don't miss El

found this site looking for a good link for Zulawski's film Possession. have seen about 75% of these, which bodes well for the ones I haven't.

i thought this was the thread where one of the noize dudes threw a hissy fit because they thought i criticized a brakhage film, but i guess not

(sorry)

An Evening w/ Ernie Gehr at NYC MoMA tonight (there were still tix 2 hrs ago).

http://moma.org/calendar/films.php?id=6243

Recent obits for Curtis Harrington refer to a series of early underground movies, including one, 'Wormwood Star', featuring the fabulous Marjorie Cameron from 'Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome'.

Anyone seen any of this?

By next year, every expensive uptown arts venue that screens a-g film will be devoted entirely to Ernie Gehr.

'Pleasure Dome' is fucking awesome! There's a collection of Kenneth Anger's films (vol. 1, more forthcoming I hope) on DVD now from Fantomas, I got it through Netflix. I liked all five of them on the DVD. Marjorie Cameron was the wife of Jack Parsons, crazy fucking world.

Chappaqua, anyone?

Anger v.2 is out.

Gehr was a funny little guy, talking about his friendship w/ Michael Snow: "Then he moved to Canada. And there was no email, it was the '60s! People were living in caves!"

Serene Velocity is hypnotic, for those who aren't susceptible to seizures... Side/Walk/Shuttle might be in my top 3 San Francisco films now.

soliciting Straub / Huillet recomms for May (only seen Not Reconciled)

Read this as Straub / Huillet romcoms, which would be great.

Although, if anyone can recommend a good place to start with them, that would also be great.

ed.b, if you still have access to a DVD machine capable of playing Region 2 DVDs, I would recommend this two disc set from New Wave films, which contains Straub-Huillet's biggest hit - Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach - and Sicilia!, which xyzzzz astutely recommended above.

Aren't all their films romances?

http://www.newwavefilms.co.uk/view-film-detail.html/?viewListing=Mjc=

RIP Peter Hutton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM4V7lAy74M

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/27/movies/peter-hutton-filmmaker-with-austerely-romantic-worldview-dies-at-71.html

:(

Straub / Huillet retrospective at UC Berkeley, starts on Jan 26, until May 2017

http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/program/not-reconciled-cinema-straub-huillet

coming to America

https://thefilmstage.com/news/grasshopper-film-to-release-catalogue-of-legendary-filmmaking-duo-jean-marie-straub-and-daniele-huillet/

http://grasshopperfilm.com/film/straub-huillet-collection/

Yvonne Rainer recommendations?

https://www.filmlinc.org/series/talking-pictures-the-cinema-of-yvonne-rainer/#films

Journey from Berlin is all I've seen - can't remember much about it, except thinking it was good.

Would so see Madame X. Ulrike Ottinger is really good.

Have fun!

obit roundup for Paul Clipson

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5371-the-daily-paul-clipson-1965-2018

RIP Jonas Mekas

http://gothamist.com/2019/01/23/jonas_mekas_avant-garde_film_auteur.php

re: the straub/huillet discussion upthread, full retro happening in london over the next three months: https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21471962&

RIP Barbara Hammer

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6250-barbara-hammer-s-legacy

word seems to be spreading that straub has passed

:-(

Straub and Godard In the same year, damm. And Rest in Provocation.

RIP. I saw From the Cloud the the Resistance, Antigone and Machorka-Muff just this year. All amazing, and the first is so singular and strange.

Here's a lovely curated playlist of shorts:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5xOztE613KMOvfW_L5zaa6j3cdLUwO4c

I have more vivid memories of reading Richard Roud's Straub book than the films themselves, intriguing though they were.
I should get around to watching Sicilia!, which James Quant of TIFF was always talking up.

couple of days left to catch two, imo, unmissable online retrospectives of female experiemntal filmmakers:

ellie epp on ultra dogme: https://ultradogme.com/2023/08/18/ellie-epp/

jun kurosawa on equinox: https://equinox.film

👍

Don't know, should I bother watching this?

https://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/film_programmes/2025/histoire-s-du-cinema/central-bazaar

Look fun?

Yes, all Dwoskin is essential

Although Central Bazaar is actually one of his easier to see films (the BFI put out a DVD of it).

A certain former ILXor co-edited a book about Dwoskin a couple of years ago btw.

Great, now won't actually be able to see this tonight but I will hunt some of his work down.

(Just reading about him and yes can see who that ilxor might be :-))