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'.
Enter the Void (2009)
7.3/10
Director: Gaspar Noe
Starring: Paz de la Huerta, Nathaniel Brown, Olly Alexander
This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), a young American drug dealer and addict... Read more
The Tempest (1979)
6.6/10
Director: Derek Jarman
Starring: Heathcote Williams, Karl Johnson, Toyah Wilcox
British helmer Derek Jarman's film version of Shakespeare's most fanciful play is definitely one of a kind. The plot remains intact, however, liberty... Read more
Antichrist (2009)
6.6/10
Director: Lars von Trier
Starring: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe
Lars von Trier's enormously controversial and challenging psychodrama stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a grieving couple who retreat to... Read more
The Lover (1992)
6.9/10
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Starring: Jane March, Tony Leung (Ka Fai), Frederique Meininger
An exotic, erotic adaptation of Marguerite Duras' autobiographical novel about a teenage girl who's initiated into sex by an older Chinese dandy in 19... Read more
Romance and Cigarettes (2005)
Director: John Turturro
Starring: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Mary-Louise Parke...
Writer/director John Turturro sets his ambitious musical in Queens, New York, where the marriage of working-class couple Nick Murder (James Gandolfini... Read more
The Magus (1968)
5.9/10
Director: Guy Green
Starring: Candice Bergen, Michael Caine, Anthony Quinn, Anna Karina
John Fowles's complex novel (he also wrote the screenplay) is the basis for this bizarre and surreal classic. Michael Caine is an English school teac... Read more
The Arbor (2010)
7.2/10
Director: Clio Barnard
A fascinating fusion of narrative and documentary from director Clio Barnard, "The Arbor" tells the powerful true story of Bradford playwright Andrea... Read more
Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
7.9/10
Director: Alain Resnais
Starring: Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoeff
Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais' epochal 'Last Year at Marienbad'... Read more
Un Chien Andalou / Land Without Bread ( Las Hurdes ) (1929)
Director: Luis Bunuel
Luis Bunuel's first film, the surrealistic masterpiece "Un Chien Andalou" ("An Andalusian Dog"), was based after an exchange of dreams with co-writer... Read more
River's Edge (1986)
7.1/10
Director: Tim Hunter
Starring: Crispin Glover, Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, Ione Skye, Roxana Zal, Daniel Roebu...
A powerful drama that uses a real incident to convey the hopelessness and hostility barely hidden under the surface of today's teenager. A big kid mur... Read more