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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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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Note to Poli
NOTE TO POLI is, in the words of his student and fellow experimental filmmaker Marjorie Keller, "a note to the filmmaker Poli Marichal 'about' penetration." P. Adams Sitney observed that the film revealed "the visionary power of sexuality for the filmmaker" and it is indeed one of his most...Watch Movie
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Nearsight
A portrait of a young woman deconstructed into Pablo Picasso-like fragments, NEARSIGHT is a film in extreme close-up. So extreme that it builds the woman's face in pieces like images in a broken mirror seen one-after-another in rapid succession. The title refers both to the intimacy of the images...Watch Movie
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New Left Note
As editor of "New Left Notes", the newspaper of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Saul Levine was at the center of multiple radical political movements. Filming from 1968-1982, he employs a rapid fire editing style to create a frenetic, kaleidoscopic portrait of the antiwar movement,...Watch Movie
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Horizons
One of the greatest if all-too-often overlooked landscape films in American cinema, Larry Gottheim’s HORIZONS displays a sensitivity to the seasons that seems more in keeping with Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” than the typical nature documentary. HORIZONS was not only Gottheim’s first...Watch Movie
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This May Be the Last Time
Even as he explored the possibilities of video production, Saul Levine continued to work in Super-8 and 16mm film to celebrate the unique aesthetic of light on film. THIS MAY BE THE LAST TIME, his 2011 study of the Charles River in Boston in the cold light of the Winter...Watch Movie
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I Want to Paint it Black
The title comes from a Rolling Stones song but the inspiration of Saul Levine's impressionist study of Prague, shot during his 2010 trip to the Czech Republic (his first trip to Europe), was his reflection on Central Europe and the Holocaust. Working on Super 8 film, this...Watch Movie
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Station Drama
STATION DRAMA is a silent, black-and-white Super-8 film from RIGHT HAND SHADE, the fourth and final section of my twelve film series TALES OF THE FORGOTTEN FUTURE. This section explores via collage cutouts, thematics related to the genres of the bio-pic, home movies and the actuality film. It...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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Orange
ORANGE is inspired by the direct film (cameraless) tradition. This tradition includes works in which the filmstrip is directly manipulated by painting, scratching, or otherwise placing objects on it. This tradition was probably originated by Len Lye in his hand painted A COLOUR BOX from 1935. To...Watch Movie
