Avant-garde / Experimental
Avant-garde is a word from the French, meaning 'ahead of the crowd'. In contemporary English, we'd say it's on the 'cutting edge'. Avant-garde filmmakers want to experiment with new ideas, forms, techniques, and expressions - and are often said to be 'ahead of their time'. Avant-garde films are characterized by a high degree of experimentation - whether it be in manipulation of narrative materials, highly stylized visual representation, or radical departures from the norms and conventions current at the time, avant-garde film is always a vehicle for the filmmaker's expression. Surrealism, abstract studies of light and form, Dadaism, and impressionistic studies of people and things figure heavily in early works of the genre.
Below is a Alice's extensive collection in this genre.
Right: The famous eyeball scene from Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali's 'Un Chien Andalou'.
The Seventh Seal (1957)
8.2/10
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Gunnar Bjornstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson
Disillusioned and exhausted after a decade of battling in the Crusades, a knight (Max von Sydow) encounters Death on a desolate beach and challenges h... Read more
Eraserhead (1977)
7.4/10
Director: David Lynch
Starring: Allen Joseph, Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Laurel Near
Inspired by his time spent living in Philadelphia, David Lynch's nightmarish cult odyssey follows a high-haired young man living in a run-down apartme... Read more
Naked Lunch (1991)
7.1/10
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Roy Scheider
William S. Burroughs' 1959 free-form, underground classic is brought to the screen weaving elements of the author's life with the fictional material.... Read more
Waltz with Bashir (2008)
8/10
Director: Ari Folman
Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman employs a unique animated style in this innovative documentary that recalls his military service in the early 1980s. When... Read more
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
7.4/10
Director: Jim Sharman
Starring: Barry Bostwick, Tim Curry, Meat Loaf, Susan Sarandon, Richard O'Brien, Patricia...
This camp musical sci-fi horror movie spoof has become - thanks to elaborate audience participation on the midnight movie circuit - the definitive cul... Read more
The Fountain (2006)
7.3/10
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Hugh Jackman, Mark Margolis, Rachel Weisz, Cliff Curtis, Sean Pat...
Darren Aronofsky directs his wife, Rachel Weisz, and Hugh Jackman in this abstract sci-fi odyssey about one man's thousand-year quest to save the woma... Read more
Alice (1988)
7.5/10
Director: Jan Svankmajer
Starring: Kristyna Kohoutova, Camilla Powers
Jan Svankmajer, the Czech master of animation, has fulfilled a lifetime ambition in this interpretation of Alice in Wonderland. Svankmajer's Alice rem... Read more
Go Fish (1994)
5.6/10
Director: Rose Troche
Starring: Guinevere Turner, V S Brodie, T Wendy McMillan
Described as a 'fun and feisty lesbian romance' telling the tale of a young writer Max (co-writer and producer Guinevere Turner), searching for a suit... Read more
Loving Vincent (2017)
7.9/10
Director: Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman
Starring: John Sessions, Chris O'Dowd, Saoirse Ronan, Jerome Flynn, Aidan Turner, Helen Mc...
In a story depicted in oil painted animation, a young man comes to the last hometown of painter Vincent van Gogh to deliver the troubled artist's fina... Read more
Man With A Movie Camera (1929)
8.4/10
Director: Dziga Vertov
One of the most extraodinary films in the history of cinema. An exhilarating and often hilarious montage showing Moscow people at work and play and th... Read more