Avante Garde

Question 1

avant-garde film

Answer 1

• circumstances surrounding its production, circulation, and reception
• a drug: we experience it in a way don’t usually do
• alters a world view
• expressing individual sensibility
• need to have complete control
• see themselves as artists
• risk takers, explorers, push the limit
• in the front line

Question 2

production

Answer 2

• artisanal mode of production
• rather than industrial
• usually 1 person/small group
• limited budget

Question 3

circulation

Answer 3

• distributed and exhibited outside of commercial contexts

- in exhibitions, festivals, universities, alternative film venues

Question 4

reception

Answer 4

• decidedly small, specialized audience

- distinguished from mainstream commercial cinema

Question 5

priorities of avant-garde film

Answer 5

• extremely varied/specific, but united by a shared goal:
• to reject established cinematic conventions in order to expand the possibilities of film
• we become aware of the limits conventional cinema is in
• knowingly responding+critiquing mainstream cinema
• associative in organization

Question 6

critical cinema

Answer 6

-desire to place awareness of conventional techniques

Question 7

How avant-garde films realize this goal

Answer 7

1. by abandoning or radically questioning narrative: -refuse renaissance perspective
   - refuse idea that film are only for story telling

Question 8

abstract

Answer 8

• presentation and arrangement of material is dictated by specific visual and/or aural qualities
• concerned with how + what they look + sound
• draw our attention to form
• patterning determined by pictoral qualities (colour, shapes, sizes, movements in the images)

Question 9

associational

Answer 9

• images and sounds are rendered and combined so as to create connections that are ideational or conceptual in nature
• metaphorical in editing
• ideational + conceptional
• suggest ideas + emotions by assembling image + sounds that may not have any logical connection

Question 10

narrative

Answer 10

• presented in diff. way
• transform narrative by adopting some of its trappings so as to interrogate or subvert them
• unconventional ways of narration, challenging to view

Question 11

How avant-garde films realize this goal

Answer 11

2. by systematically exploring the formal potential of the medium: specific ways film form transforms way world is portrayed: cinematography, editing

Question 12

How avant-garde films realize this goal

Answer 12

3. by questioning and perhaps disturbing social norms: not restricted by limits of market place

Question 13

How avant-garde films realize this goal

Answer 13

4. by constructing personal mythologies: free to make work personal
   - idiosyncratic: desires, fears
   - interrogative, autobiographical