Avant garde
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- DirectorSu FriedrichStarsPeggy HealeyMakea MacDonaldEla Troyano"Damned If You Don't is a real prize. Beautifully shot in black and white, it blends conventional narrative technique with impressionistic camerawork, symbols and voicovers to create an intimate study of sexual expression and repression. It begins with footage from a stylish old potboiler about an isolated convent, whose tale of passions leashed and unleashed provides the leitmotif for a young lesbian who watches it and the lonely nun she pursues and seduces. As the two women's lives come closer to joining, voiceovers from the biography of a 16th century lesbian nun and the reminiscences of a woman's closeted romances at a Catholic school flesh out the theme. When the two women finally meet and make love, the woman's careful unwrapping of the nun's complicated prison of clothing is both foreplay and liberating metaphor. The film is as hypnotic as a dream."
- DirectorYvonne RainerStarsDempster LeechShirley SofferJohn ErdmanRainer's landmark film is a meditation on ambivalence that plays with cliche and the conventions of soap opera while telling the story of a woman whose sexual dissatisfaction masks an enormous anger.
- DirectorJames BroughtonStarsMarion CunninghamDonald PidgeonHal GoldmanAn experimental short film by James Broughton in which his childhood day's are recounted when recalling the influence his mother had on him.
- DirectorRobert BreerAn animated short of passengers on a train with Mt. Fuji visible from the window.
- DirectorPare LorentzStarsThomas ChalmersThis documentary short film looks at the devastating and costly problems, including seasonal flooding and erosion of precious topsoil, associated with the Mississippi River system and promotes more Federal projects to remedy the situation.
- DirectorMaya DerenCherel ItoTeiji ItoStarsJohn GenkeJoan PapeA documentary film about Haitian vodou.
- DirectorMaya DerenStarsDon FreisingerRichard SandiferPatricia FerrierDancers, shown in photographic negative, perform a series of ballet moves, solos, pas de deux, larger groupings. The dancers glide and rotate untroubled by gravity against a slowly changing starfield background. Their movements are accompanied by music scored for a small ensemble of woodwind and percussion.
- DirectorMaya DerenStarsCynthia BarretTerry ChapmanFrank IonsonMaya Deren's unfinished short film from 1951, "Ensemble for Somnambulists", set to DeVotchKa's "How It Ends".
- DirectorMaya DerenStarsJohn CageMaya DerenAlexander HammidSilently, a woman wakes on a beach as the tides go in reverse. Her dreamscape unfolds as she tries to locate a chess piece traveling from the beach to a party to a country road and then back.
- DirectorMaya DerenStarsMarcel DuchampPajorita MattaThe surrealist film shows repetitive imagery involving a string fashioned in a bizarre, almost spiderweb-like pattern over the hands of several individuals, most notably an unnamed young woman and an elderly gentleman.
- DirectorKenneth AngerStarsSamson De BrierMarjorie CameronJoan WhitneyHistorical, biblical, and mythical characters gather in the pleasure dome and become part of a visual feast of superimposed images, hallucinations, and decadence.
- DirectorKenneth AngerStarsClaude RevenantAndré SoubeyranNadine ValencePierrot waxes romantic, entranced by the moon. Harlequin appears and bullies him, then uses a magic lantern to project an image of Columbine. Pierrot tries to court the illusory Columbine unsuccessfully, then enters a mystical moon-realm from which he returns dead.
- DirectorKenneth AngerPictures at an October Gallery, London, exhibition of drawings and objects by and about the occult master Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). Exhibit titled "An Old Master".
- DirectorKenneth AngerA man in tight jeans buffs his car to the strains of "Dream Lover".
- DirectorKenneth AngerStarsKenneth AngerBobby BeausoleilBill BeutelExperimental short, featuring strobe-like erotic imagery with several shots of the Rolling Stones in performance and an original synthesizer score by Mick Jagger.
- DirectorKenneth AngerStarsCarmilla SalvatorelliA woman dressed in an elegant period dress wanders through the water gardens at the Villa d'Este.
- DirectorKenneth AngerStarsYvonne MarquisA soundtrack plays folk rock as a woman prepares, at noon, to take her Borzois for a walk. She goes through her dresses, all 1920s style flapper gowns, holding them one at a time, shaking them as if they are dancing. She picks one - in puce. She puts it on, delighted, adds perfume, languishes on a chaise for a few minutes, then goes for her walk. It all has a 20s feel.
- DirectorMichael SnowStarsHollis FramptonLyne GrossmanNaoto NakazawaClaimed by some to be one of the most unconventional and experimental films ever made, Wavelength is a structural film of a 45-minute long zoom in on a window over a period of a week. Very unconventional and experimental, indeed.
- DirectorErnie GehrAn experimental short film which shows a time-lapse in the basement hallway of a Binghamton University building.
- DirectorMan RayStarsKiki of MontparnasseAndré de la RivièreRobert DesnosTwo people stand on a road, out of focus. Seen distorted through a glass, they retire upstairs to a bedroom where she undresses. He says, "Adieu." Images: the beautiful girl, a starfish in a jar, city scenes, newspapers, tugboats. More images: starfish, the girl. "How beautiful she is." Repeatedly. He advances up the stair, knife in hand, starfish on the step. Three people stand on a road, out of focus. "How beautiful she was." "How beautiful she is." "Beautiful."
- DirectorLen LyeAbstract animation drawn directly on Technicolor film, some with underlying real life footage of unrelated subjects. Various colorful shapes and patterns move and interact, set to upbeat music.
- DirectorIsidore IsouStarsIsidore IsouJean-Louis BarraultBlanchette BrunoyIn this experimental film, Isidore Isou, the leader of the lettrist movement, lashes out at conventional cinema and offers a revolutionary form of movie-making: through scratching and bleaching the film, through desynchronizing the soundtrack and the visual track, through deconstructing the story, he aims to renew the seventh art the same way he tried to revolutionize the literary world.
- DirectorPatrick BokanowskiStarsMaurice BaquetJean-Marie BonMartine CoutureA surreal, nightmarish collection of imagery.
- DirectorJonas MekasStarsPeter BeardEd EmshwillerKen JacobsArtist-writer-poet-filmmaker Jonas Mekas documents his early years building a life and discovering an arts community in New York.
- DirectorJerzy SkolimowskiStarsJean-Pierre LéaudCatherine-Isabelle DuportJacqueline BirA fast-paced comedy about a young Belgian car nut and hairdresser's apprentice, his girlfriend, and their legal and illegal attempts to get a Porsche under him for his nearing debut race.
- DirectorStan BrakhageNotes of journey life of Stan Brakhage like a befits of a diary book in a very strong sense of experimentation, romantic, modernist and abstract.
- DirectorMichael SnowStarsAllan KaprowEmmett WilliamsMax NeuhausA camera in a classroom continuously sways back and forth at various speeds as people occasionally move around the setting.
- DirectorPeter KubelkaAn early experimental short film produced by Peter Kubelka.
- DirectorMaurice LemaîtreAn experimental video comprised of diverse shots and interviews, featuring a French voiceover. It transcends mere projection, presenting a genuine film with historical content.
- DirectorRose Lowder
- DirectorGuy DebordStarsRasit TahtaciDuygu ErkanA Latin palindrome is the title of Guy Debord's last film, in which he, as narrator, explains that he will make neither concessions to the tastes of his viewers nor to the dominant ideas of his day. After extensively insulting the audience that goes to the cinema to forget its heteronomous life, the film becomes autobiographical, using images from the world of spectacle: advertising brochures, clips from feature films (Les enfants du paradis), comics, aerial footage of Paris, tracking shots through Venice, photographs of friends - all commented on by Debord, with an at times melancholy undertone: "This Paris no longer exists." His assessment is that one of the great pleasures of his life has been the sensation of the passage of time, and as a witness to the disintegration of social order, he has loved his epoch.
- DirectorRené ViénetStarsHung-Liu ChanIngrid Yin-Yin HuJason Piao PaiImagine a kung fu flick in which the martial artists spout Situationist aphorisms about conquering alienation while decadent bureaucrats ply the ironies of a stalled revolution. This is what you'll encounter in René Viénet's's outrageous refashioning of a Chinese fisticuff film. An influential Situationist, director René Viénet's stripped the soundtrack from a run-of-the-mill Hong Kong export and lathered on his own devastating dialogue. A brilliant, acerbic and riotous critique of the failure of socialism in which the martial artists counter ideological blows with theoretical thrusts from Debord, Reich and others.