Wallflower Press- Avant Garde Film

17 | AVANT-GARDE FILM
Forms, Themes and Passions
Michael O’Pray

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Avant-Garde Film: Forms, Themes and Passions examines the variety of concerns and practices that have comprised the long history of avant-garde film. It covers the developments of experimental filmmaking since the modernist explosion in the 1920s in Europe through to the Soviet film experiments, the American Underground cinema, the French New Wave, structuralism and contemporary gallery work of the young British artists. Through in-depth case studies, the book introduces students not only to the history of the avant-garde but also to varied analytical approaches to the films themselves ranging from abstraction (Richter, Ruttmann) to surreal visions (Bunuel, Wyn Evans), underground subversion (Jack Smith, Warhol) to experimental narrative (Deren, Antonioni).

Michael O’Pray is Reader in Film in the School of Art and Design, University of East London and has published widely on experimental cinema and artists’ film and video.

2003
144 pages
978-1-903364-56-7 £12.99 (pbk)

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chapter samples
Preface
Chapter One

reviews
'An excellent job of providing a very readable introduction … a good starting point for anyone interested in avant-garde film.'
Julia Knight, University of Luton

'A good balance of historical detail with lucid and engaging textual analysis of individual works to illustrate the progression of particular movements.’
Ben Cook, The Lux Centre

'Lucid and engaged introduction … O’Pray combines a historical account with in-depth case studies where important films often are analysed in fresh and innovative ways. One of the problems is that since very few of us have actually seen many of the classical avant-garde films, there are many misunderstandings circulating concerning their content and form. Michael O’Pray helps us establish – at least tentatively – what some of these works actually depict.'
Lars Gustaf Andersson, Lund University, Film International

‘In his Preface, Michael O'Pray clearly announces that his book is intended to be introductory and 'aimed primarily at students and the general reader', which is the mandate of the Short Cuts Series for which it was written. Moreover, as the book's subtitle 'Forms, Themes and Passions' suggests, there is no central argument, interpretive strategy, or theoretical paradigm guiding O'Pray's approach to avant-garde film. The closest he comes to developing a critical apparatus, or at least a point of view on his subject, is in his introductory chapter, 'The Avant-Garde Film: Definitions'. In the following chapters, most of which are only ten or twelve pages long, O'Pray briskly surveys significant periods and movements in the history of avant-garde film from the 1920s though the 1990s.
In each chapter, O'Pray supports his generalizations and brings some specific details to his overviews by focusing on a few representative films and filmmakers. For 'The 1920s: the European Avant-Gardes' O'Pray singles out Hans Richter's Rhythmus 21, Walter Ruttmann's Lichtspiel Opus 1, Man Ray's Retour a la raison, and Bunuel and Dali's Un Chien Andalou for special consideration. For 'The 1920s: Soviet Experiments' he selects Eisenstein's October and Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera; for 'The 1920s and 1930s: British Avant-Garde Film', Len Lye's Trade Tatoo and John Grierson's Granton Trawler (one of the few surprises among O'Pray's choices of exemplary works); for 'The 1940s: American Mythology', Maya Deren's A Study in Choreography for Camera and Kenneth Anger's Eaux d'Artifice; for 'The 1950s: The Aesthetics of the Frame', Stan Brakhage's Anticipation of the Night and Robert Breer's A Man and his Dog Out for Air; for 'The 1960s: The New Wave', Godard's Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle, Huillet and Straub's Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, and Antonioni's L'Eclisse (another surprising choice, but then purists would probably object to including any New Wave directors in a book on avant-garde film); for 'The 1960s: Sex, Drugs and Structure' (a desperately inclusive title), Andy Warhol's Sleep, Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures, and Michael Snow's Wavelength; for 'The 1960s and 1970s: Form Degree Zero', Peter Gidal's Action at a Distance, Malcolm LeGrice's Berlin Horse, and Kurt Kren's 15/67 TV; for 'The 1980s: The Ghost in the Machine', Win Evans's Epiphany, Patrick Keiller's The End, and Jane Parker's The Pool. In his final chapter, 'The 1990s: The Young British Artists', O'Pray discusses three film/video artists, Sam Taylor-Wood, Gillian Wearing, and Douglas Gordon … As a Reader in Film at the University of East London, O'Pray is in a good position to report on, and evaluate, trends in avant-garde film and video that are not well known outside the UK’
William C. Wees, www.film-philosophy.com