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'.
Stourley Kracklite (Brian Dennehy), a distinguished American architect, is invited to Rome with his young attractive wife Louisa (Chloe Webb) to set u... Read more
Michael Keaton stars in this award-winning black comedy written, directed and produced by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Struggling actor Riggan Thomson... Read more
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant in this classic slice of 60s life, featuring troubadour Arlo Guthrie in his only major film appear... Read more
Inspired by a shocking true life shooting spree in Vienna in 1993, Michael Haneke's challenging film weaves together fragments of the story in an atte... Read more
Written and directed by French musical duo, Daft Punk, this is the story of two robots driving through the California desert on a quest to become huma... Read more
In this dramatic story of blackmail and human retributions, a beautiful but sadistic young wife gives birth to a nightmare...a love of her own creatio... Read more
An outrageous tale of two of lifes losers, from the Andy Warhol factory. Joe Dallesandro is a heroin-addicted male hustler whose girlfriend, Holly Woo... Read more
An early effort by Martin Scorsese, with Barbara Hershey, David Carradine, Barry Primus and Bernie Casey. The film is set at a railroad yard during th... Read more
Earth has been decimated and as humans search for a new planet to inhabit, a race of aliens attempt to make a new home on our inhospitable, abandoned... Read more
This penetrating and mesmeric trip into the dark soul of Europe follows a young American pacifist of German descent who sojourns to post-WWII Deutschl... Read more