Experimental and Avant-Garde Film

Overview

Experimental or avant-garde film is film produced outside the usual constraints of traditional filmmaking, especially those employing alternatives to traditional narrative. They may be made or distributed by major studios and distributors, but in most cases experimental films are produced outside the film industry mainstream. “Experimental” and “avant-garde” are used more or less synonymously. Historically, “avant-garde” and “underground” referred to specific eras of film and to the experimental films associated with movements of those eras—the 1920s and 1930s for the European avant-garde, the interwar and postwar period for the American avant-garde, and the 1960s and 1970s for the American underground. Outside of discussions of these specific movements, “experimental film” is the more useful descriptor, and can be applied to films produced without any relationship to these historical movements. “Narrative film” or “traditional film” will be used here to refer to non-experimental films.

While experimental film is sometimes discussed as a genre, this can be deceptive; genres are usually described and explored in terms of their approach to narrative conventions and tropes, while experimental film is principally non-narrative. It might be better thought of as a mode of filmmaking: if genre is a type of story, experimental film is a type of method.

Experimental film is generally not distributed as widely as commercial film. Museums, galleries, and specialty cinemas host periodic screenings, and many experimental films are available on home media or, increasingly, online.

Some of the frequent characteristics of experimental film include the use of abstract, surreal, or impressionist imagery, the use of non-diegetic sound, and explorations of the physical medium, including manipulating the film itself (such as painting on it or scratching it). Like abstract art, poetry, or music, experimental film engages the viewer’s attention in ways necessitated by the lack of a clear narrative: without a story to follow, the viewer is forced to pay attention to other elements.

While experimental film is produced outside the constraints of traditional film, it has nevertheless influenced traditional film, and vice versa. Advances in film technology and technique impact both. Certain techniques and styles pioneered in one area often find new purpose in the other; montage, for instance, was pioneered by Russian filmmakers primarily working in narrative film (with Sergei Eisenstein as the most prominent example), but has become a staple of experimental film. The image-driven editing and transitions of experimental film have, in turn, influenced narrative film conventions, from the tropes of dream sequences (and related hallucinatory sequences) to the quick-cut editing that can be found in some music videos or action scenes.

Further Insights

Motion pictures developed concurrently with the Dada and Surrealist art movements of the 1910s and 1920s, so it is not surprising that many of the earliest films were experimental. In the 1920s, avant-garde film was especially active in France, Germany, and Russia. Entr’acte(1924) was directed by Rene Clair, and premiered as an entr’acte—a piece of music or other entertainment performed between two acts of a production—for the ballet Relache in Paris. The music for Entr’acte was composed by the ballet’s composer, Erik Satie, whose work influenced the minimalists, surrealists, and the Theatre of the Absurd. The film runs about twenty minutes and includes sequences in slow-motion or reversed, and special effects such as an egg turning into a bird after being shot. Entr’acte has since been exhibited at several film festivals, and was released as a special feature on the Criterion Collection edition of Clair’s 1931 film À Nous la Liberté. Participants included many of the visual artists associated with surrealism and Dada, most notably Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, as well as Georges Auric. Auric was a member of Les Six, a group of French composers influenced by Satie and composing in reaction against the work of Richard Wagner. They were informally led by Jean Cocteau, a writer, artist, and filmmaker who was part of the connective tissue between the world of film and the greater French art scene.

The Dadaists also produced Ballet mécanique, written and co-directed by Fernand Leger with Dudley Murphy and Man Ray. Originally premiering as a silent film, George Antheil composed a score for it that was performed both separately and in conjunction with later screenings of the film. Which creative mind had the most input or was most engaged in shaping the film has been the subject of some debate by film historians, but it is clearly influenced by Leger’s experiences in World War I, during which he sketched much of the war machinery he saw, later painting monstrous robots in his 1917 The Card Players, while recovering from a mustard gas attack. The film features rapidly edited, almost chaotic sequences of machinery, in some cases shot in such a way as to abstract them to mere moving shapes. It is widely considered one of the masterpieces of early experimental film.

The best known experimental film, arguably of any era, is Un chien andalou (1929). The surrealist film was a collaboration between Spanish director Luis Bunuel (his first film in a long career as one of film’s most distinct directors) and Salvador Dali. Despite the use of title cards indicating the passage of time, the film has no story to speak of, nor can anything confidently be said of its characters. Dream-like imagery informed by Freudian free association follows a series of events with sometimes shocking sights—most famously, an eye being slit open. The film had been inspired by Bunuel’s dream of the moon being similarly sliced; when he told the painter about it, Dali told him of a dream of a hand crawling with ants. The script was kept strictly devoid of rationality, in contrast with the work of mainstream filmmakers who were establishing the now-familiar rules of filmic narrative. Like other European experimental films of the era, it was notable for employing faster cuts than most narrative films, and for shifts driven by imagery rather than story. It is often pointed to as a precursor to the film style of music videos as developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and has influenced a number of works since, including David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and the Pixies song “Debaser.” Bunuel and Dali went on to collaborate on the 1930 film L’Age d’Or, during which they had a falling out over politics. (Bunuel leaned left while Dali would soon support the fascist dictator Francisco Franco.) Bunuel’s subsequent work was principally narrative, and while some of his films tell fairly straightforward stories (1967’s Belle du Jour, starring Catherine Deneuve), others are shot through with surrealist imagery and situations (most famously, 1972’s Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie).

In 1952, screening of Isidore Isou’s Venom and Eternity led to riots at the Cannes Film Festival, which eventually led to a split in the French experimental film scene, then dominated by the Lettrist movement. The Lettrists had coalesced around Isou in the 1940s, influenced by the earlier Dadaists and Surrealists but strongly critical of most previous art—the movement was famous for its criticism of Charlie Chaplin. Venom and Eternity combined found footage, abstract imagery, footage of the streets of Paris, and a film society argument. It was not formally entered in the film festival. Isou harangued festival workers until they arranged a screening for him, despite the fact that the film—which was over four hours long in its first cut—was unfinished. When the screen went blank a third of the way into the film, with the remainder consisting only of audio in a dark theater, the audience responded angrily—though it is uncertain just how raucous or violent things became.

In the meantime, an experimental film movement had developed in the United States. While there had been a few early American experimental works—most importantly, Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand’s 1921 Manhatta, a non-narrative documentary of Manhattan, and a number of works of early animation such as those of Winsor McKay—the avant-garde began in earnest in the 1940s. As with the Europeans, some filmmakers worked in both experimental and traditional film. While especially true in animation (in which all early work was, in essence, experimental), Hollywood directors King Vidor and Nicholas Ray also made notable experimental films late in their careers.

After World War II, American experimental film experienced a boom. Stan Brakhage was directly influenced by Isou and pioneered non-narrative films that expressed the mood or thoughts of the filmmaker. He was known for techniques that physically altered the film, such as by scratching the film or painting on the celluloid, and for collage film, which juxtaposes multiple sources of found footage, a technique the surrealists had employed in the 1930s. Brakhage’s work continues to influence American film, an influence that can be seen in, for instance, the opening credits of David Fincher’s Seven (1995) or the crucifixion sequence of Martin Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ (1988). The eighth episode of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) is heavily influenced by Brakhage, as were Lynch’s early short works.

In the 1960s and 1970s, film was a popular medium for conceptual artists and Pop artists like Yoko Ono and Andy Warhol, who made dozens of experimental films, including the 35-minute Blow Job (presented as a continuous reaction shot of a man receiving oral sex, though only the face is visible) and the six-hour Sleep (depicting poet John Giorno asleep, again in a continuous shot). Warhol’s feature-length Batman Dracula, made without permission of DC Comics, created the Batman “camp” aesthetic that was later used in the 1960s TV series.

While experimental film today is largely exhibited online, in museums and galleries, or at film festivals, there are several notable film features that are experimental. The work of Terrence Malick became increasingly experimental in the twenty-first century, with 2011’s Tree of Life bridging the gap between the dream-like but clearly narrative work that came before, and more imagistic works like 2012’s To the Wonder and 2015’s Knight of Cups, in which a loose narrative is only suggested. Nicolas Winding Refn, while known for narrative films like 2008’s Bronson and 2011’s Drive, has also produced works like Valhalla Rising (2009) and The Neon Demon (2016), in which surrealism quickly overtakes the narrative. Lars von Trier, Peter Greenaway, Sally Potter, Simone Rapisarda Casanova, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Gaspar Noe have all produced experimental feature films that have been well-received in the twenty-first century and have enjoyed some degree of commercial success.

Issues

A number of optical effects are prominent in experimental film, especially early films, while also becoming part of the standard film vocabulary. Fades and dissolves are transitions to or from an image—gradual transitions, rather than the simple cut. Dissolves transition between two images while fades transition between an image and a blank screen. They were originally created with double exposures, but can now be created through editing of the video signal or the use of software. In narrative, long dissolves are often used to indicate the passage of time, while short dissolves may be used simply because they are less visually jarring than a cut. They tend to be used sparingly in narrative film compared with experimental film. Transitions may also be made with various wipes, in which one image replaces another as it passes into the frame.

Split screen is the dividing of the screen into two or more parts as simultaneous images are shown in each part. Optical printers were used to copy separately filmed sequences onto a single composite negative; as with other techniques, video editing and software have simplified this process. Split screen was used by Russian filmmakers in the 1910s and its use was further explored by Abel Gance for his 1927 epic Napoleon, which instead of creating a composite negative used three cameras and three projectors to project three separate films simultaneously on one long screen. Experimental film used split screens to juxtapose imagery.

While double exposures and other multiple exposures were used in traditional film to create dissolves, they were used less subtly in experimental film, in which images could be combined in dream-like or free-associative ways to create visuals that could not be captured in the real world.

Montage is an editing technique combining some or all of the above techniques, for various purposes. In the English-speaking world, a “montage sequence” is generally one in which editing is employed to condense time or space in a narrative. The cliché example is of a “training sequence” such as in Rocky and other sports movies, in which weeks or months pass by in a few minutes of screen time. Montage is often used more subtly in narrative film, such as in travel scenes in which a few shots will be edited together to suggest the whole of the journey. In experimental film, montage is used to collage-like effect to assemble a wide variety of images and sequences together.

Early animated films were frequently experimental, growing out of various pre-film animation technologies of the nineteenth century. Winsor McKay’s Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) was created from 10,000 hand-made drawings to accompany his vaudeville act, in which he would interact with the animated dinosaur on screen before appearing on film with it and “riding” it off screen. Abstract animation was pioneered in Weimar Germany, but was banned by the Nazis in 1933 as “degenerate art.” The earliest animated feature film, Lotte Reiniger and Berthold Bartosch’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), used cutout silhouettes rather than drawings, and color-tinted film. While the rise of Disney, Warner Bros., Fleischer, and other animation studios drove narrative animation beginning in the 1930s—with Disney’s creation of a story department separate from the animators being instrumental in making narrative the dominant mode—animators continued to experiment with new techniques and approaches even within narrative bounds. Bob Clampett and Tex Avery pioneered expressionism in American animation in their shorts for Warner Bros., MGM, and other studios, while the preference for lower cost animation at midcentury helped encourage greater use of abstraction and impressionism within traditional shorts, rather than fully animated realism.

While “narrative” and “experimental” have mostly been contrasted here, the boundary is actually porous. Experimental techniques often find their way into narrative films, with dream sequences as the most obvious example, and not all experimental films are non-narrative as such. Most notably, the work of the French Impressionists often used experimental techniques and styles to make narrative films. Gance’s aforementioned Napoleon is an exemplar of the approach, as is Jean Renoir’s Nana or Jean Epstein’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Most directors associated with French Impressionism have in their filmographies both clearly experimental and clearly narrative films, making it less surprising that they also created works that are somewhere in between.

Bibliography

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