Avant Garde Shorts

[Boz]

Lapis
(Whitney/1966)

Momentum
(Belson/1969)

While I'm so glad to have finally moved into the avant garde section of my film course, I was not blown away by these first two selections. Yes, they both effectively dive headfirst into the idea of cinematic purism we've been discussing; producing something that can only be created on film, and yes, they are both visually and mentally stimulating despite the near-complete lack of any explanation, but I feel as though personally, I will most likely have trouble ever considering avant garde films independently from my preconceptions derived from the ending to 2001, along with various Windows screensavers and Media Player displays. Original for their era, but perhaps cheapened by the passage of time.

[Boz]

The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra
(1928/Florey & Vorkapich)
Interesting silent short, telling the story of a man who comes to Hollywood to find fame and fortune but instead finds nothing but failure and despair, and he seems to descend into psychosis and depression. The setting is depicted here in hellish shadows and stark lighting contrasts courtesy of Citizen Kane's Gregg Toland. Add in some primitive, frantic hand-held sequences and the film produces a wonderfully terrifying sense of futility and dehuminization for our main character. In an early scene, he is branded across the forehead with the number 9413, signifying his worthlessness among the masses of Hollywood hopefuls, and it is only upon his eventual death and ascension to Heaven that he is freed from his worldly confines and his enthusiastic smile returns.

The Fall of the House of Usher
(1928/Watson & Webber)
Foreboding and indistinct, nothing clear is really transmitted here, although you know that's how the directors wanted it.

Fuji
(1974/Breer)
Really enjoyable short, mixing quick cutting camera work containing fleeting a sense of nostalgia, with simplistic stop motion animation, all focusing on the ominous Mount Fuji as it passes by through a train window. The only soundtrack is the coming and going sounds of the train over a rickety track. It all adds up to form what seems like a glimpse of someone's distant memories projected onto the screen. Great little piece of work.

[Boz]

Mothlight
(1963/Brakhage)
A "found foliage" film composed of insects, leaves, and other detritus sandwiched between two strips of perforated tape.
Interesting experiment in expanding the parameters of what is considered cinema. Personally, I saw it as a comment of sorts on the invisible hyperactivity in nature, that what may appear soft and slow and gentle, at its micro-levels, is hectic and rapid-fire. We viewed Window Water Baby Moving after this, which is just a silent film showing the birth of Brakhage's daughter, but I couldn't quite bring myself to watch.

[Boz]

Meshes of the Afternoon
(1943/Deren)
Very interesting short. Deren moves gracefully around a villa, seeing a haunting man with a mirror for a face, keys and knives dissappearing and switching, and eventually, clones of herself. In the end, she is awoken from what seemed like a dream by a gentle male figure, but upon the sudden arrival of the knife from the dream, she stabs him in the forehead, shattering his cranium to reveal a beach and an ocean inside. In the end, we find that the film was perhaps a pictoriliazation of the dying woman's thoughts, as the male figure from earlier enters her appartment to find her dead from an apparent suicide.

A Study in Choreography for the Camera
(1945/Deren)
A silent short in which we watch a slow-moving dancer moving in and out of several different settings as he dances. Less entertaining than the former film, could've used some music.

Scorpio Rising
(1963/Anger)
Perhaps the best short film I've ever seen. Anger mixes varying motifs, from religion to masculine idealism, to nazism, to homosexuality, all wrapped up in colorful, fast-paced but visually detailed film with no dialogue but a fantastic late 50's soundtrack. While it was somewhat dissappointing to see the vague homosexual undertones that were established in the first half descend into an orgy around the midpoint of the film, the scenes and montages that proceeded to wrap the piece up redeemed it. What begins as a nostalgic look at the age of Marlon Brando films, leather jackets, and cigarettes, eventually morphs into what appeared to be a comment on societal views of gay organizations and ideals. Another key element of the film seems to be the "live fast, die young" idea, with the sporadic appearances of a grim reaper, a noose, and newspaper articles about motorcycle accident deaths forming a morbid picture of the youth's future. And the somber ending bathes a fallen biker in the red flashes of an ambulance siren. Overall, a complex, sometimes disturbing, consistently fascinating film.

Kustom Kar Kommandos
(1964/Anger)
Supposedly originally conceived as a companion piece to Scorpion Rising, Anger ran out of of money so it was instead released a simple 2 minute video of a greaser buffing his custom car and then driving it away to a slow song from the 60's. The only real point of interest here is odd KKK reference in the title.

Rabbit's Moon
(1972/Anger)
We watch as a man dressed as a white rabbit jumps around the forest which is bathed in blue light. He is obsessed with the moon, and is visited by a demonic clown and a beautiful woman as he is engulfed in the moon's gaze. Anger utilizes good music again, but the meaning or quality of this short is otherwise lost on me.

[Boz]

Invocation of My Demon Brother
(1969/Anger)
Anger takes us on a psychadelic trip through the occult, touching on themes of death, drugs, and the supernatural. Mick Jagger does the score and the Stones make an appearance. Anger's use of rapid cross-cutting, superimposing several seperate shots, and just his editing in general makes this a masterpiece for its time.

Puce Moment
(1949/Anger)
More from the avant garde, some of Anger's early work. We watch as an old fashioned Hollywood starlet flips through her multitude of dresses, looks at herself in the mirror, perhaps hallucinates, and then takes her dogs for a walk. I read that due to the need to overexpose the film, Anger had his star move very slowly and then sped it up in post-production. This adds an eerie sort of quality to her movements, as evident in her rapidly swinging earrings. The highlight is the soundtrack, which consists of a Mick Jagger-like singer over an acoustic guitar, although this music was supposedly added some 15 years later, which accounts for the fact that it's very much 60's-sounding. Overall, interesting. Anger's body of work is very much worth exploring for those who haven't. Youtube has a lot of his stuff.

[Capo]

Again, not to sound elitist or anything, but I'd prefer to post my own thoughts on the films in their threads, since I am currently revisiting my ratings and comments where needed.

I think Meshes of the Afternoon is too significant a film to be degraded into a conscious "movement". It's the sole reason why, when we migrated from the old film board to this one, I got rid of the genres and divided the films into dates. Categorisations are too open to discussion, and too insulting to my appreciation of certain films, to be of any lasting worth. I think it's much safer to go by dates...or even directors, but we have threads for those.

Know what I mean?

[Boz]

Definitely agreed.

Like in the early cinema thread I created, I intended this thread to be used for discussion of shorts that perhaps didn't quite warrant their own thread, and as you can see, it's difficult to even put a date on the beginning of the avant garde movement.

And as for the quoting of other people's proviews, which I've done a lot of in the threads I created today, I wasn't sure how people would feel about it. In my case at least, if and when I review a film twice, I've been posting both. I think that it's important to not only acknowledge what your current thoughts on a film are, but what they were after a first viewing, after a second viewing, etc. This leaves room for easy reflection on your own previous thoughts upon a revisit, and may perhaps even incite more discussion as people look at what they had previously written.

Again, you're the ultimate decision-maker here, reorganize as you wish.

[Capo]

Whether there's even an avant-garde "movement" is questionable. Academics are, I think, far too ready to put things under labels, to divide Cinema into Hollywood and avant-garde. I'm learning about Hollywood Cinema at the moment, and there's an argument in Richard Maltby's Hollywood Cinema (2nd edition; recommended) that critics and academics rarely approach it right, wishing from it something other than its aims (to make money). It's very interesting, and the first time I've really consciously thought about a "right" approach to mainstream American Cinema, but even so, movements are vague and, I think, elitist, if we are making the assumption that certain movies pertain to be them.

Like I said, I don't think short films fall short of meriting their own threads. Why so? Because of length? The Big Swallow (1901) lasts under a minute, but probably sparks a discussion which would - and has - outlived the duration of Cinema itself.

I agree that some bad short films - of which there really are many - might not merit all that much to say, but if that's the case, why make a thread on them? As I go through my film database, I realise that many of the films I saw so long ago, I couldn't possibly give a just rating or even review for, and so I'd feel like a fraud even attempting to write about them in a thread.

I'm not making threads for films unless I feel comfortable with my current view. And if I watch a film again after making the thread for it, I will modify my post and bump it as appropriate.

Like I said, I'm making these threads to encourage more individual attention on films, not broad overviews of any particular (and dubiously defined) "movements".Film noir, for example, spans across two or three decades and across two different continents (perhaps even three), but it was never defined until after it existed. It wasn't an active movement at all.