Avant-garde films on Vimeo

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First collected by Fotini Pakou
Oct 28, 2009
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"Avant-garde" is a word from the French, meaning "ahead of the crowd." In contemporary English, we'd say it's on the "cutting edge." Avant-garde film makers want to experiment with new ideas, forms, techniques, and expressions--and are often said to be "ahead of their times." Avant-garde films are characterized by a high degree of experimentation--whether it be in manipulation in narrative materials, in highly stylized visual representation, or in radical departures from the norms or conventions current at the time, avant-garde film is always a vehicle for the filmmaker’s expression. Often, avant-garde films focus on the lyrical, the abstract, formal beauty for its own sake—and therefore may avoid conventions of narrative. As such, you might call them cinematic or painterly "poems." Abstract film has also been called "absolute" film. Avant-garde films are often iconoclastic, mocking conventional morality and traditional values; the filmmaker's intense interest in eccentricities and extremes may shock for the viewers. Indeed, the avant-garde film maker’s purpose may be to wake or shake up the audience from the stupor of ordinary consciousness or the doldrums of conventional perspective. Such highly expressive and uncoventional films may become cult classics--and acquire the description, avant garde, as a result. Some avant-garde films are called "experimental, " a term popularized by David Curtis in Experimental Cinema (New York: Delta, 1971), in the sense that the films may be experiments to explore how the camera can emulate and/or enhance human visual perception. In an interview for the Millenium Film Journal, Rose Lowder, a contemporary French avant-garde (or experimental) filmmaker, says that - you can see on the screen things that aren't actually on the film. A very simple way of demonstrating this is to make holes in the filmstrip with an office puncher. If you draw a line on a piece of transparent leader and then punch a hole in ever
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