Academic literature on the topic 'Avant-Garde and experimental cinema'

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:15:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fernando Henrique Lacerda Stutz.pdf: 1850440 bytes, checksum: 6bf9163a71562438af833a79cb8fc8c4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-07-21<br>In 1969 the film critic P.A.Sitney said that, suddenly, a cinema structure "had emerged." Although imprecise, his observations were responsible for triggering a long process of discussions about a kind of cinema that, in general, was characterized by self-reflectiveness and antiillusionist processes. The exploration of the filmstrip's materiality, of the alternative projection and camera-capture methods, of the different editing processes and articulation between sound and image, as well as a number of other procedures that called attention to the cinematic structure, were taken as central features of those "structural films." In the search of a genealogical approach of the facts and building on key authors of the genealogical method, especially Nietzsche and Benjamin, alongside with the help of historicaldocumentary data, this research has made clear that the emergence of a dedicated cinematography to its own structure, had derived from a historical development marked by the emancipation of cinema as art, as well as from the development for developing alternatives to the set of cinematic codes agreed by the film industry. From the avant-garde of the 1920s to the artistic movements of the postwar 1950s, the will to acquire an "essential cinematic language have mobilized artists and filmmakers to produce experimental works that questioned such codes, giving rise to the structural films. New York, London and Vienna, altogether saw the development of a filmic production that prioritized to discuss the structural basis of cinematic experience and cinematic discourse from the visual perception phenomena, to cognitive processes during the view. Heterogeneously, the so-called structural works not only cast new light on the film practice itself, expanding its limits; but also demonstrated the possibility of using cinema as an useful instrument for philosophical speculation. Making "films about films", the structural filmmakers completed the avant-garde project of employing film as an autonomous art-form, turning its attention to its own structure, and thereby making the structure of things, the man and his thought more and more visible<br>Em 1969 o critico de cinema P.A.Sitney alertou para o fato de que, de súbito, um cinema da estrutura havia emergido . Apesar de imprecisas, suas observacões foram responsáveis por desencadear um longo processo de discussões acerca de um tipo de cinema que, em sintese, caracterizava-se por ser auto-reflexivo e anti-ilusionista. A exploracao da materialidade da pelicula fotoquimica, dos métodos alternativos de projecao e captacao, dos sistemas matemáticos de montagem e articulacao entre som e imagem, bem como de uma série de outros procedimentos que chamavam a atencao para a estrutura do cinematografo, foram tomados como caracteristicas centrais daqueles filmes estruturais . Buscando uma visao genealogica dos fatos e tomando como base autores fundamentais do método genealogico, especialmente Nietzsche e Benjamin, aliados a investigacao de dados historico-documentais, esta pesquisa tornou explicito que a emergencia de uma cinematografia voltada para sua propria estrutura derivou do desdobramento historico de um processo marcado pela emancipacao do cinema como arte e, consequentemente, pela elaboracao de alternativas ao conjunto de codigos convencionados pela indústria cinematográfica. Das vanguardas da década de 1920 aos movimentos artisticos do pos-guerra dos anos 1950, a vontade pela aquisicao de uma linguagem essencialmente cinematográfica mobilizou artistas e cineastas a produzirem obras experimentais que problematizaram tais codigos, fazendo emergir o cinema estrutural. A partir de Nova Iorque, Londres e Viena, desenvolveu-se um tipo de producao que priorizou discutir as bases constituintes da experiencia e do discurso cinematográfico - da percepcao visual aos processos cognitivos. De modo heterogeneo, as chamadas obras estruturais nao apenas lancaram novas luzes sobre o proprio fazer-cinema, expandindo seus limites; mas também demonstraram a possibilidade de utilizá-lo como um meio útil para a especulacao filosofica. Fazendo filmes sobre filmes , os realizadores estruturais completaram o projeto vanguardista de encarar o cinema como arte autônoma que, voltando-se para sua propria estrutura, também tornou visiveis a estrutura das coisas, do homem, e de seu pensamento

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo o mapeamento do espaço que ocupa Terayama Sh&#363;ji, poeta, escritor, dramaturgo e diretor de cinema japonês, frente ao período histórico a que pertenceu e frente às teorias da vanguarda e do pós-modernismo. A investigação se inicia com o período do pós-guerra no Japão, quando em meio a protestos e ansiedades políticas, floresce na capital do país uma nova vanguarda artística. O primeiro capítulo é dedicado a um exame do teatro angura e da nova onda do cinema, dois movimentos dos quais Terayama fez parte. Procura-se então delinear suas propostas artísticas e suas principais influências, japonesas e estrangeiras, examinando como seu trabalho se aproxima ou se afasta do paradigma pós-moderno conforme teorizado principalmente por Fredric Jameson, mas levando em conta reflexões sobre as aplicações desse conceito especificamente no Japão. Por fim, o último capítulo se debruçará sobre dois longas-metragens do diretor Joguem seus livros, vamos às ruas, de 1971, e Pastoral: Morrer no campo, de 1974 de modo a encontrar exemplos do seu caráter experimental, subversivo, de sua insurreição contra as instituições da família e do Estado e de suas complexas relações com a política, a história, o pastiche e a espetacularização.<br>This research aims at mapping the space occupied by Terayama Sh&#363;ji, a Japanese poet, playwright and filmmaker, in his historical context and in relation to avant-garde and postmodernism theories. The investigation begins with postwar Tokyo, when amid protests and a climate of political anxiety, a new avant-garde movement starts to flourish. The first chapter is dedicated to an examination of the angura theatre and the Japanese new wave, two of the movements Terayama was part of. We shall then trace his general artistic views and main influences, Japanese and foreign, examining how they relate to postmodern characteristics as theorized mainly by Fredric Jameson, but also inquiring at how this very concept can apply to the Japanese context. In the last chapter, we shall take two of Terayamas feature films Throw Away Your Books, Rally In The Streets and Pastoral: To Die in The Country for further analysis, in order to find more specific examples of his experimental and subversive character, his rejection of the institutions of family and the State, and his complex relationship with politics, history, pastiche and spectacularization.

Chris Marker é um cineasta que realizou documentários políticos pouco convencionais ao longo de quase sessenta anos de carreira. Depois de uma militância ativa e inserida no coração de acontecimentos cruciais na França e na Europa, e de uma carreira literária como editor, ensaísta e romancista, natural que seus filmes, vistos isoladamente, provoquem as mais equivocadas interpretações. Esta pesquisa procura, através de um levantamento de seus filmes e escritos, dos debates que foram se travando sobre a vida nacional francesa e mundial, sempre retomando os fios dos acontecimentos decisivos do período do Front Populaire (1936), da ocupação da França pelos nazistas e das lutas de Resistência buscar uma interpretação para muitos dos aspectos aparentemente desconcertantes de sua filmografia. Ao longo dos capítulos a pesquisa aborda, a partir de documentação esparsa em textos, declarações, debates, frases de filmes, os elementos biográficos \"enigmáticos\" de que se tem conhecimento, dada a discrição do cineasta sobre a sua pessoa. Em seguida o momento crucial da entrada de Marker, com 16 anos, no liceu em Paris e turbulências do ano de 1936, na França, discorre sobre o Front Populaire. Depois foca o nascimento de uma corrente, da qual Chris Marker participa, influenciada pela filosofia personalista de Emmanuel Mounier; e depois sua passagem pela revista Esprit e posteriormente a sua integração nas lutas da Resistência. Seguindo os passos do futuro cineasta, aborda o impacto da Resistência na vida militante e a formação dos cineclubes no meio operário com a Associação Peuple et Culture. Toda esta trajetória é permeada por comentários e análises de cenas dos futuros documentários. Por fim a pesquisa, aborda a problemática do cinema militante, analisando L\'ambassade (1973), filme de solidariedade com a Unidade Popular chilena e contra o golpe de Pinochet e o curta sobre o editor François Maspero. Os últimos percalços de nosso percurso busca construir um debate sobre A. Medvedkine e V. Maiakóvsky e a profanação da arte moderna, procurando investigar como na obra de Chris Marker coincidem cinema militante, cinema experimental, cinema ensaio e cinema documentário.<br>Chris Marker is an intriguing filmmaker who produced unconventional political documentaries over almost sixty years. After an active militancy, and inserted in the heart of crucial events in France and Europe, and working on a literary career as an editor, essayist and novelist, it is natural that his films, viewed in isolation, could cause the most equivocal interpretations. This research seeks, through a detailed analyses of his films and writings, to work with the debates that were important on the French national and global life of his time. Always thinking about the decisive events of the Front Populaire in the period (1936), the occupation of France by the German Nazis and the participation of Marker in the struggles of the Resistance. All of this puzzeled elements seek an interpretation for many of the seemingly confusing aspects of his filmography. Throughout the chapters of this research, we seek to approach, with this documentation, texts, statements, debates, films phrases, the enigmatic biographical elements of his uncanny formation. Marker is known by the discretion about himself. Working on his years of youth and formation, we see that when aged 16, in high school in Paris and the 1936 year in France, discussing at length the Front Populaire, we seek to work about Chris Marker influence by the personalist philosophy of Emmanuel Mounier and then by Esprit and later in it\'s integration in the struggles of resistance. Following in the footsteps of the filmmaker, this work discusses the impact of this years in his militant life, including the training of workers film clubs. All this history is permeated by scenes and debates of his future documentaries. Finally, the research addresses the issue of militant cinema, analyzing L\'ambassade (1973), the solidarity with the Chilean Popular Unity and the struggle against the totalitarian latin american dictatorships, and a short film-portrait of the editor Maspero. We end our research with a debate on A. Medvedkine and V. Mayakovsky and the profanation of modern art, trying to investigate how the work of Chris Marker coincide with militant cinema, experimental cinema, film essay and documentary cinema.

Nous partons du constat de l’importance de l’image dans le processus d’anthropogénèse, car la fixité de l’image se dévoile comme une médiation temporelle, c’est-à-dire, comme la création d’un temps rapporté médiatisant notre rapport au réel et transgressant par là notre champ perceptif. À ce titre, l’histoire de l’image apparaît comme le développement de divers modèles eidétiques statiques qui vont être en négociation et relation permanente avec les modèles eidétiques dynamiques : le langage, les gestes, l’outillage, la musique, la danse, l’habitat ; modèles qui en contrepartie sont des médiations nous permettant d’investir l’espace et de le délimiter. L’interpénétration des deux types de modèles, dynamiques et statiques, constituerait, dans la pléthore et la diversité d’éléments composant chaque culture, le caractère définissant l’homme comme animal politique. C’est ainsi que l’on a pu discerner une différence ontologique lors de l’apparition de la trace photographique, trace résultant, non d’une idéalisation formelle et symbolique, mais de l’idéalisation d’une distance, à partir de laquelle se matérialise l’écran en articulant le regard depuis une nouvelle échelle opératoire. L’apport essentiel de l’image serait entré donc dans une nouvelle phase qui, au bout de presque deux siècles, aurait transformé l’homme en animal médiatique. C’est là que l’histoire de la nouvelle trace, sous l’essor de la technologie numérique, centre tout enjeu politique dans sa manifestation la plus conséquente, celle de l’expression cinématographique.Dans ce cadre nous avons abordé et privilégié une histoire du cinéma à des moments où celle-ci développe des enjeux spécifiques dans son rapport au réel, comme notamment dans l’exemple de l’œuvre du cinéaste mexicain Téo Hernández, réalisée pour l’essentiel en Europe entre 1968 et 1992. Sa forte dimension phénoménologique, l’importance du corps dans l’acte de filmer, tout autant que sa fine réflexion sur le médium et son rapport au réel, nous ont fournit une clé de voûte nous permettant de comprendre les grands changements médiatiques qui sont survenus dans les années 80, et qui ont déterminé le regard politique du monde actuel<br>We begin by observing the importance of the image in the anthropogenesis’ process because the fixed image reveals temporal mediation, namely, the creation of reported time, mediatizing our relation to the real and thus, transgressing our fields of the perceptual. On this basis, the image’s history appears as a development of various static eidetic models that are going to be in a negotiation and permanent relationship with dynamic eidetic models: language, gestures, equipment, music, dance, the habitat; models that, in return, are mediations enabling us to invest the space and divide it up. The intermingling of the dynamic and static models would constitute the character defining man as a political animal, in the myriad and diversity of the elements that are components for each culture. That is how we are able to detect an ontological difference at the time when the photographic trace appears, a trace not resulting from a formal, symbolic idealization but from an idealization of distance, from which the screen materializes by articulating the eye from a new operative scale. The image’s essential contribution would thus have entered a new phase that would have transformed man into a media animal after almost two centuries. That is where the history of the new trace becomes the core of all political issues in its most consistent manifestation, under the surge of digital technology, that of cinematographic expression.In doing so, we have addressed and favoured one of cinema’s histories at a time when there was a development of specific issues in relation to the real, notably using the work of a Mexican filmmaker, Téo Hernández, mainly done in Europe between 1968 and 1992 as an example. Its powerful phenomenological dimensions — the importance of the body while filming — and also the deep reflexion on the medium and its relation to the real, have provided us with a keystone that enables us to understand the major changes in media that happened during the 1980s and determined the political outlook of the world today

EXPRMNTL fut probablement la plus importante manifestation jamais consacrée au cinéma expérimental. Conçu et organisé par Jacques Ledoux et la Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, le festival de Knokke / Bruxelles, qui ne connut que cinq éditions (1949, 1958, 1963, 1967, 1974) jouit aujourd'hui d'un statut mythique. Cette initiative singulière et inclassable fut bien davantage qu'un simple festival de cinéma : un point de rencontre pour la création d'avant-garde et la pensée contemporaine, un événement placé sous le signe de l'imprévu, du désir et de la contestation, y compris celle du festival même. En somme : une manifestation à ce point cohérente avec son objet qu'elle fut en elle-même une expérience. Cette recherche retrace l'histoire des cinq éditions du festival, de sa naissance à sa disparition. Elle se fonde sur les archives de la manifestation, jusqu'ici inexplorées, sur les comptes-rendus parus dans la presse de l'époque et sur de nombreux entretiens avec des acteurs et témoins<br>EXPRMNTL was probably the most important event ever devoted to experimental cinema. Designed and organized by Jacques Ledoux and the Royal Belgian Film Archives, the festival of Knokke / Brussels, which only had five editions (1949, 1958, 1963, 1967, 1974) now enjoys a mythical status. This unique and unclassifiable initiative was more than just a film festival: a meeting point for avant-garde culture and contemporary thinking, an event placed under the sign of the unexpected, desire and protest, including that of the festival itself. In short: an event so consistent with its object that it was in itself an experience. This research traces the history of the five editions of the festival. It is based on the hitherto unexplored archives of the event, the reports published in the press at the time and many interviews with protagonists and witnesses

Cette thèse porte sur les représentations filmiques de la guerre de Libération(1964-1974) et de la Révolution mozambicaine (1975-1987) et vise à analyser les enjeux esthétiques et politiques du cinéma révolutionnaire de ce pays. La compréhension de cette problématique passe dans un premier temps par un examen des différentes logiques qui ont présidé aux positionnements de la théorie anticoloniale à l’égard de la culture pour ensuite interroger la politique du cinéma d’État et ses contradictions. Les représentations filmiques de es deux processus historiques furent un instrument essentiel pour la formation de l’identité nationale, à l’intérieur d’un dispositif épistémique historiographique. En reconstituant les principes d’une culture de libération transnationale, cette thèse envisage de considérer les conditions politiques, idéologiques et technologiques qui conduisirent à la fondation de l’Institut national de cinéma mozambicain (INC) en mars 1976 et l’orientation que le Front de libération du Mozambique (FRELIMO) tenta d’imprimer au cinéma.La délimitation des trois phases du cinéma révolutionnaire mozambicain mettra en exergue les déséquilibres entre la coexistence d’un projet de production cinématographique collective, l’expérimentation formelle et les postulats du programme étatique. La notion de «forme-événement » nous permettra de concilier deux dimensions de la production esthétique :celle qui envisage l’art comme reflet ; celle qui le considère à partir de ses effets. À travers l’analyse esthétique formelle et historique d’un ensemble de films singuliers réalisés entre 1966et 1987, nous chercherons à mettre en évidence les positions prises par les cinéastes, les résistances et les rapports successifs et contradictoires entre le cinéma collectif, d’auteur et d’État. De l’étude approfondie du film Mueda, Memória e Massacre (1979-1980) de Ruy Guerraet de son histoire matérielle émergera une connaissance archéologique et critique du programme politique et culturel mozambicain.Cette thèse envisage également une insertion du cinéma révolutionnaire mozambicain dans son contexte historique et culturel en élaborant une cartographie du cinéma de Libération en relation avec la conjoncture politique des années 1960 et 1970. La notion de « cinéma de Libération » se trouve dans un cadre historique, géographique et catégoriel par rapport à l’histoire du cinéma politique, d’avant-garde et expérimental et de l’histoire du cinéma en général. L’étude d’une série d’oeuvres filmiques nous permettra d’établir une cartographie extensible du cinéma de Libération, englobant le cinéma révolutionnaire portugais (1974-1982)et l’« état de la forme » de ce cinéma<br>The dissertation focuses on the filmic representations of the War of Liberation(1964-1974) and of the revolution (1975-1987) in Mozambique, and aims to analyse the aesthetic and political issues of Mozambican revolutionary cinema. To understand this question,the various logics that guided the positions of anti-colonial theory with regard to culture are examined in the first instance, while the State cinema policy and its contradictions are reassessed in the second instance. The filmic representations of these two historical processes were an essential instrument for the construction of national identity, within an epistemic historiographical apparatus. By reconstructing the principles of a culture of transnational liberation, the dissertation intends to consider the political, ideological, and technological conditions which led to the foundation of Mozambique’s National Institute of Cinema (INC) inMarch of 1976, and the orientation that the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) attempted to ascribe to cinema.The identification of three phases of Mozambican revolutionary cinema will highlight the discrepancy between the coexistence of a project for the collectivisation of film production,formal experimentation and the premises of the State programme. The notion of ‘form-event’will allow us to reconcile two dimensions of the aesthetic production: one, which considers art as a reflection; another, which considers it in terms of its outcomes. Through the formal aestheticand historical analysis of a set of singular films produced between 1966 and 1987, we will seekto problematize the positions adopted by the filmmakers, the points of resistance, as well as the succession of contradictory forms of relation between collective, auteur and State cinema. Anarchaeological and critical knowledge of the Mozambican political and cultural programme will emerge from the comprehensive analysis of Ruy Guerra’s Mueda, Memória e Massacre(1979-1980).The dissertation purports to replace Mozambican revolutionary cinema in its historicaland cultural context by drawing a cartography of the Cinema of Liberation in relation to the political situation of the 1960s and 1970s. The concept of ‘Cinema of Liberation’ is sited in a historical, geographical and categorial framework with respect to the history of political, avantgarde,and experimental cinema, and to the history of cinema in general. The analysis of a selection of films will allow us to extensively map the Cinema of Liberation, including the cinema of the Portuguese Revolution (1974-1982) and the ‘state of the form’ of this cinema

My thesis examines the expanded cinema of Gill Eatherley, Annabel Nicolson and Lis Rhodes. My intent has been to locate them within their historical context, addressing in particular their relationship to the cohesive, 'Structural' film culture then emerging from the London Filmmakers' Co-operative, and the distinct expanded film form with which it was associated in the early part of the 1970s. The main focus of my methodology, however, is interpretative rather than empirical. Through close textural readings of key works I have attempted to open up fresh critical frameworks for understanding their work, referring to discourses of phenomenology and the haptic, for example, as a means of exploring their subjective and embodied relationship to the materials and apparatus of film. My thesis proposes a multi-interpretative analysis of Eatherley, Nicolson and Rhodes' rich and complex film works. The aim of my research is to create a dialogue of ongoing questions between the different theoretical, political and subjective positions their films engender, from which, it is hoped, productive juxtapositions and convergences can emerge.

This thesis examines Edgar Reitz’s internationally acclaimed films <i>Heimat </i>and <i>Die Zweite</i> <i>Heimat</i> in the context of the early avant-garde theories and films, which Reitz developed during his years at the Ulm Film Institute. The two films have been widely analysed in articles, essays, books and PhD theses within the context of the Heimat film genre of the 1950s and the anti-Heimat and critical Heimat film genres of the 1960s and 1970s. They have also been extensively debated for their controversial portrayal of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. Astonishingly, in all the studies on the films, critics have assumed that, apart from an autobiographical relationship, there is no link between Reitz’s <i>Heimat-</i>films and his early avant-garde theories and films. Interpretations, therefore, largely overlook the cinematographic issues brought up by the films. This dissertation attempts to close this gap in the discussion of Reitz’s <i>Heimat-</i>films. Starting with a detailed study of Reitz’s early avant-garde theories and films, it investigates Reitz’s contributions of the New German Cinema, shedding light on his novel approach in exploring a new film language, as well as a new film venue. Critics have debated the question of the venue of Reitz’s <i>Heimat</i>-films, which were made for the cinema but gained success in television. Few, however, have related this debate to Reitz’s earlier attempts to challenge the conventional venue of film. The fact that critics have predominantly focused on the question of history and the meaning of Heimat in the two films has had the unfortunate consequence that references to Reitz’s earlier films have been restricted to those which likewise deal with the topic of National Socialism, namely <i>Die Reise nach Wien</i> and <i>Stunde Null</i>.

This thesis explores the notion of ‘experimental voice’ in avant-garde performance, in the way it transgresses conventional forms of vocal expression as a means of both extending and enhancing the expressive capabilities of the voice, and reframing the social and political contexts in which these voices are heard. I examine these avant-garde voices in relation to three different liminal contexts in which the voice plays a central role: in ritual vocal expressions, such as Greek lament and Māori karanga, where the voice forms a bridge between the living and the dead; in electroacoustic music and film, where the voice is dissociated from its source body and can be heard to resound somewhere between human and machine; and from a psychoanalytic perspective, where the voice may bring to consciousness the repressed fears and desires of the unconscious. The liminal phase of ritual performance is a time of inherent possibility, where the usual social structures are inverted or subverted, but the liminal is ultimately temporary and conservative. Victor Turner suggests the concept of the ‘liminoid’ as a more transgressive alternative to the liminal, allowing for permanent and lasting social change. It may be in the liminoid realm of avant-garde performance that voices can be reimagined inside the frame of performance, as a means of exploring new forms of expression in life. This thesis comes out of my own experience as a performer and is informed both by theoretical discourse and practical experimentation in the theatre. Exploring the voice as a liminal, transgressive force requires analysis from an experiential perspective.