Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Cinema from 1928-1954
Studio: Kino
WorkNameSort: Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Cinema from 1928-1954
This second compendium of short films from the collection of film archivist Raymond Rohauer includes works by art-school favorites Stan Brakhage, Willard Maas, Marie Menken and Jean Isidore Isou, among others. As a whole, this program shows less imagination than the 1920s and ’30s works in Volume One, even though Kino has again secured the best transfers possible and included optional commissioned scores for films usually shown silent. There are just so many times that you can watch a sad-sack Everyman plod down the street while random images signifying Birth! Death! Man and Woman! Infinity! are abruptly intercut before ennui sets in. Of the ponderous and dated offerings, the one that still holds the most relevance is Isou’s Venom and Eternity, mostly because of the bratty glee it takes in pulling out all the avant-garde stops. Incomprehensible chanting, scribbled-upon film, upside-down images and discontinuous editing seem inserted purposely to rile up the viewer. After several intertitles boasting that audiences are stupid and boos and catcalls are like standing ovations to him, Isou makes an inarguable request: ‘I hope you will quietly watch the screening of this film which at least has the virtue of being different.â?�
This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2007.