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 Thin Red Line (Blu-Ray) (1998)
7.6/10
Director: Terrence Malick
Starring: Ben Chaplin, Elias Koteas, George Clooney, Jared Leto, Jim Caviezel, John C Reil...
In 1942, Private Witt (Jim Caviezel) is a U.S. Army absconder living peacefully with the locals of a small South Pacific island. Discovered by his com... Read more
The Pillow Book (1996)
6.7/10
Director: Peter Greenaway
Starring: Yoshi Oida, Vivian Wu, Ken Ogata, Ewan McGregor
Peter Greenaway's bold stylistic experiment has as it's theme, the 'correspondence' between the daughter of a famous writer and a publisher, written o... Read more
American Buffalo (1995)
5.7/10
Director: Michael Corrente
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Franz, Sean Nelson
David Mamet's profane, provocative three-character play. Dustin Hoffman plays a self-ennobled world expert who horns in on the plans of his friend, a... Read more
Angels and Insects (1995)
7/10
Director: Philip Haas
Starring: Mark Rylance, Kristin Scott Thomas, Patsy Kensit
A haunting, erotically charged drama set in Victorian England, where a poor anthropologist decides to take residence with a wealthy family after a dis... Read more
Tank Girl (1995)
5.3/10
Director: Rachel Talalay
Starring: Lori Petty, Ice-T, Naomi Watts, Malcolm McDowell
Apocalypse - ker-pow! Lori Petty is the British comic book-inspired heroine who enjoys cigarettes, beer, her half-man, half-kangaroo boyfriend and her... Read more
I Shot Andy Warhol (1995)
6.6/10
Director: Mary Harron
Starring: Lili Taylor, Stephen Dorff, Jared Harris, Lothaire Bluteau, Martha Plimpton, Ann...
Lili Taylor is eerily convincing as Valerie Solanas, Factory fringe figure, founder and only member of SCUM (Society for Cutting up Men) and the woman... Read more
Dottie Gets Spanked (1994)
7.3/10
Director: Todd Haynes
Starring: Evan Bonifant, Robert Pall, Julie Halston, Barbara Garrick
Writer/director Todd Haynes made this stylish, tender-hearted short between his critically acclaimed features 'Poison' and 'Safe', and the deeply pers... Read more
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994)
7.3/10
Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Udo Samel, Anne Bennent, Branko Samarovski, Otto Grunmandl, Gabriel Cosmin Urdes
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
Faust (1994)
3.1/10
Director: Jan Svankmajer
Starring: Petr Cepek, Andrew Sachs
Jan Svankmajer's follow-up to his acclaimed 'Alice' is an equally bizarre version of the myth of Dr. Faustus. Combining live action with stop-motion a... 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