Friday, 9 January 2015

History of Experimental Film

Definition of the ‘avant-garde’:

Rupture with Tradition: Characterised by an impulse to "make it new" and by an anti-traditionalism. A total rupture with tradition and attack on the institutions of Art and Literature within bourgeois society. A rejection of all absolute aesthetic conventions and considerations of taste. Characterised by intellectual playfulness and mystification.

Formal Subversion: Culture and its norms were viewed as an artificial arrangement to be subverted, parodied and transgressed. Shock tactics and anti-art gestures were used to shake the public out of its apathetic acceptance of outmoded values. 'Avant-garde' art decomposed old frames of reference; it values fragments, curious collections and unexpected juxtapositions - erotic, exotic, and unconscious. Spontaneous, the primitive and the irrational were prized. Breaks down barriers between conscious and unconscious and liberates the imagination bringing about new perceptions and new social relations. 

Thematic Nihilism: A general loss of faith in absolutes: God, Man, Reason, Truth, Beauty, Honour, Authority, Reason, logic, language and accepted social values were all rejected. They defined themselves in opposition to the dominant conservative forces within society often seeing themselves as aesthetic terrorists antagonistic to accepted social ideals and values.
Taken for the A2 Blog

La Jetee 
I am claustrophobic and my worst fear is to be buried alive so the whole underground things about the film upsets me. After something happened in my life and now I suffer with my nerves I am scared of the dark because my mind plays tricks on me so the black and white pictures and them being darker in the 'underground' scenes upset me. The non diegetic sounds of the heart beat was to me so piercing that it made me: grit my teeth, hold my breathe and put on completely on edge, at one point I had to look away. Also the close ups on the man in the blindfold upset me for some reason, it might be the fact that he was forced to do this thing and he cant see and it is restricting. The whispering also upset me because it was sinister. 

Un Chien Andalou

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