Avant Garde films

FeralDamek

FeralDamek

Hello,
I would like to inquire about your thoughts and views on avant-garde films.

As a video major at an art college, I am required to view avant-garde films. This past weekend I was required to attend "Ten Thousand Waves" by Isaac Julien at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, MA.

Previous to this, I have had very little exposure to avant garde-films. I thought that there were some interesting techniques and ideas in the making of the films(such as using 9 screens at the same time), but they all seemed to be filmed by amateurs(who am I to judge? Nobody).

I don't know if I am just failing to appreciate these films, but I honestly did not like any of them. Bad camera angles, bad editing, bad color, noise, overall the quality was just bad. And to top it all off, the stories were all, for the most part, uninteresting and inconclusive.

I don't mean to paint myself as a negative person or a harsh critic. I am sure that there are good avant-garde films out there. In fact, I will begin to search for some tonight.

So what do Indie filmmakers think about avant-garde style films?
 
I don't personally like them much either, but I appreciate their place pushing boundaries. I'd rather others do it so I don't have to. I do, however, like Maya Deren's work, and I saw some decent stuff put out by a couple of students in school with me for film. Most just drives me crazy in its intent and lack of consideration for ME as an audience member (I'm sure there are folks out there for whom this kind of work is well targeted).
 
I think the exposure to avant garde and experimental films is important, but no one can tell you what your tastes should be... I'm surrounded by people who deplore my taste in movies I actually choose to watch, but I like them to be mostly deprived of story (stupidly simple storylines), lots of explosions and car chases... pure popcorn escapist entertainment. I would love to make films like that, but can't currently afford to.

But I can watch Die Hard and see the foreign film influences in the cinematography now :)
 
Actually they're not bad films, I love them. However, there are many bad ones as you guys pointed out. Labeling anything stupid 'Avant Garde' don't make it so.

The word; Avant Garde is "ahead of the crowd" means different things to people. I suppose Fellini: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Fellini was ahead of the crowd? I'd say it was a style of his and not necessary ahead of anything. I liked his work, but not everything he made.

Great impressionist painters of the past were 'Avant Garde' because their work became 'normal' or accepted today. Why else anyone want to pay $200 million for a single painting. Does abstract painting is one of them? People pay millions for one Pollack painting but am not sure if that would qualify. (BTW I like abstract paintings)

In the film business, 'shaky cam' 'zoom in/out for absolutely no reason' 'MTV-like editing' and other stupid things I find, is getting acceptance. So, NYPD TV series was ; Avant Garde when they started this idiotic filming -style-. It's nothing new today, every home movie maker doing it :) That's just style and nothing advanced about it. (wish they'd stop making it)

Story telling in films is a different matter.
Pehaps Fellini and others took a stab at it but failed to make it popular.
For a few years now, am trying to shoot a feature without a single dialogue. A complex (thriller) story told without saying a word. It's a very difficult thing to do because HOW you shoot this story makes all the difference. Everything has to be visual, so the audience can follow the story, regardless what country they live or language spoken.
(Yes, there are people who already tried or made something similar, but not good enough for the people to accept it.)
BTW, if anyone has any interest in this kind of project, contact me.

So, who can tell what should be considered 'Avant Garde' ?
 
This is an incredibly complex (and good) question, and as knightly says, at the end of the day, it's not for everyone. Because of that, well, you can't imagine the budget and crew of a full-scale production (many avant-garde works are by a single creator, or a small crew). Sometimes art films are about the deliberate rejection of the "rules" of filmmaking...starting from nothing to see what wheels get reinvented.

The most important thing, however, is that avant-garde films are not meant to be viewed as other films are. They're often not narratively structured. The idea is to appreciate them as you would a painting, or a sculpture, or a piece of installation art. However, due to the nature of the medium, the experience is a little different. Art works by absorbing or thinking about it at your own pace, as a whole or on a detailed scale. The viewer controls the experience, whereas a film has a set run-time, and we're accustomed to being more passive about the experience of film. You can glance at the Mona Lisa, and get an impression of the piece in total. You cannot do the same with a film. You can't, in a gallery situation, pause and focus on the framing of a certain scene and think about what the artist meant by that (which, in most cases, they were most definitely trying to convey something). Roger Ebert believes that film cannot be art, and I think this is part of where he's coming from. But this is getting into a "what is/is not art" and "what is good/bad art" discussion.

There is a middle ground. Films like Lynch's "Inland Empire" I think sit somewhere between art film and traditional narrative. There IS a narrative, but it's told from a symbolically confusing perspective. Once you figure it out, however, just about everything in the film makes sense.

I once saw (can't recall the name of the artists) a film, on three screens, played in succession. The two ends were scenes from Wim Wenders' "The American Friend" (adaptation of Ripley's Game from the 70s), featuring Bruno Ganz having a conversation with different people, in different locations. The center screen showed Ganz (filmed years later) walking from the first scene to the second, across the city (Hamburg? Can't recall). The point of it was to draw attention to what filmmakers accomplish with a cut like that. As you watch Ganz crossing the city, you imagine what his character is thinking, and the time he spends thinking between these two conversations. You start thinking about that in other films; what is the character's thought process BETWEEN the scenes? If it were you, how long would you dwell on the conversation, and when would you make the decisions that you make (since decision is more interesting to watch than indecision). The film served an artistic purpose, that is to say, got me thinking about the medium and the way stories are presented.
 
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