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'.
Romeo is Bleeding (1993)
6.6/10
Director: Peter Medak
Starring: Gary Oldman, Lena Olin, Annabella Sciorra, Juliette Lewis
A sharp thriller with all the right elements: a nifty script about greed, corruption and sex; a grimy film noir feel that's tinged with a hallucinator... Read more
The Committee (1968)
6.3/10
Director: Peter Sykes
Starring: Robert Lloyd, Paul Jones
This independent black-and-white film noir stars Paul Jones of Manfred Mann fame and is a unique and controversial document of Britain in the 1960s. A... Read more
Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic (2008)
7.6/10
Director: Jake S Hughes
Starring: Narrated by, Tom Stechschulte
Experience Alan Moore's groundbreaking comic as never before in this series that puts the original artwork on-screen, adding voiceover and an original... Read more
Peter Greenaway Collection: The Draughtsman's Contract / A Zed & Two Noughts / Peter Greenaway - A Documentary (1982)
Director: Peter Greenaway
Starring: Andrea Ferreol, Anne Louise Lambert, Anthony Higgins, Brian Deacon, Eric Deacon,...
Peter Greenaway has crafted a string of visually extravagant films that are experimental, erudite, and have won him an ardent cult audience. This excl... Read more
Pierrot Le Fou (Crazy Pete) (1965)
7.7/10
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, Dirk Sanders
Aka "Pierrot Goes Wild". Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina run away together to the South of France, he is escaping from his rich wife, she is escapi... Read more
Leviathan (2012)
6.5/10
Director: Verena Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Filmed off the coast of New Bedford, Massachusetts - at one time the whaling capital of the world as well as Melville's inspiration for Moby Dick; it... Read more
Marat / Sade (1967)
7.6/10
Director: Peter Brook
Starring: Patrick Magee, Glenda Jackson, Clifford Rose
('The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sa... Read more
The Power of Emotion (1983)
7.2/10
Director: Alexander Kluge
Iconoclast, philosopher, aesthete: Alexander Kluge is all this and more. One of the founding fathers of the New German Cinema, Kluge made a varied and... Read more
Spectres of the Spectrum (1999)
6.4/10
Director: Craig Baldwin
Starring: Sean Kilkoyne, Caroline Koebel
Mixing bizarre narration with footage taken from educational films, vintage TV shows, cartoons, commercials, and early cinematic works, filmmaker Crai... Read more
Radical Digital Cinema Volume 2: Summer Moon (2002) / Fools (2003)
Director: Hanno Hackfort, Tom Schreiber
Starring: Oliver Mommsen, Laura Tonke, Christoph Bach
Two more films from Wim Wenders' digital cinema project. 'Summer Moon' (AKA 'Juminond') features a young couple who, only though they've just met, wi... Read more