Silent
see all genres ›Avant-garde cinema began in the silent era (particularly in Europe) while a fair amount of subsequent experimental work in the United States and elsewhere has remained an entirely sound-free zone. Even today, they often still do (and every film herein is absent of any sound whatsoever).
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Genres / Avant-garde / Silent
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Williamsburg
A pocket-sized city symphony, WILLIAMSBURG collects some of the first images Jonas Mekas shot with a film camera in 1950 (along with footage from 1972 when he was returning to his old neighborhood as a visitor). Bygone Brooklyn is richly evoked in the everyday life of the street: the elevated...Watch Movie
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Meshes of the Afternoon
One of the most important films in the history of American avant-garde cinema, Maya Deren's MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON is captivating and dream-like, filled with tinges of psychodrama, murder mystery, and film noir. In a seemingly ordinary Los Angeles home, the film's...Watch Movie
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At Land
AT LAND begins at sea. In the film's stunning opening sequence, a woman (played by filmmaker Maya Deren) emerges on shore, climbs up a pile of driftwood... and finds herself in the middle of a formal banquet. She then moves from lush, verdant jungles to seaweed-strewn beaches, stealing chess...Watch Movie
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Ritual in Transfigured Time
Elusive and enigmatic, RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME begins with its director, the avant-garde pioneer filmmaker Maya Deren, winding a seemingly endless skein of yarn. She is joined by a young woman (the Trinidadian dancer Rita Christiani, one of Deren’s closest friends) who is...Watch Movie
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Our Lady of the Sphere
Of all my films, this is the most popular to date. Unfortunately, it is also the most cartoon-like and has an almost visible storyline: the young boy's travels through terror, death and the Underworld. My own conception of the circus sequence in the film connotes the world's...Watch Movie
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Travel Songs
Drawn together from two decades of itinerant shooting in Europe, TRAVEL SONGS evokes Jonas Mekas' improvisatory approach to sightseeing, with Assisi, Moscow and Stockholm all filtered through his singularly animated lens. Though tuned to fine-grained particularities of landscape and culture,...Watch Movie
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Rhythmus 21
Hans Richter's position in the art world was unique. As one of the earliest exponents of Dada, he was also one of the first to recognize the new possibilities cinematography offered the artist. He participated in the first avant-garde film movement alongside Fernand Leger, Marcel Duchamp, Man...Watch Movie
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A Study in Choreography for Camera
"If I did not live in a time when film was accessible to me as a medium, I would have been a dancer, perhaps, or a singer," the filmmaker Maya Deren once said. "But this is a much more marvelous dance. In film, I can make the world dance!" After college, Deren landed her first...Watch Movie
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Blushes
BLUSHES is an exploration of the body. It contrasts gentle imagery of the female form with stark geometrics and powerful rushes of color. Self-depiction and tangible manipulation of the filmstrip establish a new agency for the filmmaker. Through its confrontational nature it subverts the gaze...Watch Movie
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Meditation on Violence
Haunting Chinese flute and Haitian drums accompany a graceful, elegant dance performance by Chao-Li Chi in Maya Deren's MEDITATION ON VIOLENCE. The film was released following the publication of her book, "An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film", and her winning the Grand...Watch Movie
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Letters, Notes
Conceptually, Stephanie Barber's short film LETTERS, NOTES is simplicity itself: found photographs hold the screen as animated texts transcribe brief notes and letters unmoored from context. And yet the elusive poignancy that emerges of this exquisite corpse structure is richly suggestive of the...Watch Movie
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Immer Zu
IMMER ZU is an elliptical, experimental animated film which evokes a mysterious undercover world of secret messages, cryptic language and indecipherable codes. Shot in luminous black and white, IMMER ZU uses miniature two and three dimensional figures and sets, as well as shadow puppetry, to...Watch Movie
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Fog Line
Called “a small but perfect film” by no less than American avant-garde cinema’s patron saint Jonas Mekas, Larry Gottheim’s groundbreaking early work is a silent single-shot short in which the camera remains stationary but nature provides magical action. A landscape framed by the stretch of...Watch Movie
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Friday Mosque
A silent meditation on the Islamic prayer ritual through motion (water is the core, but light is the cause) in FRIDAY MOSQUE. Shot on high-contrast black and white 16mm film, Navai hand processed the negative and painstakingly contact- printed the strips of celluloid. The resulting image quivers...Watch Movie
