Avant Garde

Avant Garde

Avant Garde is a French term which translates into “ahead of the crowd” in common comptempary English. Avant Garde film makers experiment with new ideas, technique and expressions. The films are characterized with a high degree of experimentation to allow it to look different which often comes with a manipulation of the narrative primary compounds or sometimes a radical change from the norms / conventions of the current times. Avant Garde director feel there films are a vehicle for expression.

The majority of the time Avant Garde films focus on the abstract they purposely avoid conventions of a main narrative. Some people have referred to them as cinematic or painterly poems. Abstract have also been called “absolute” film.

Avant Garde films can be iconoclastic; they seem to mock conventional morality and traditional values. The directors have an intense interest in eccentricities and extremes to mainly shock the viewer. The main intent is to wake and shake from the ordinary consciousness or the doldrums of the conventional perspectives. As these films are so highly expressive and unconventional they can easily become cult classics and acquire a following allowing them to be successful whilst still underground.

David Curtis in 1971 popularized a new term for the films called “Experimental cinema” with the sense that the experiments to explore how the camera can emulate or enhance visual perceptions.
Probably one of the most renowned directors for Avant Garde films is Maya Deren who’s “Meshes of the Afternoon” which is about a solitary flower on a long driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, a phone off the hook: discordant images a woman sees as she comes home. She naps and, perhaps, dreams. She sees a hooded figure going down the driveway. The knife is on the stair, then in her bed. The hooded figure puts the flower on her bed then disappears. The woman sees it all happen again. Downstairs, she naps, this time in a chair. She awakes to see a man going upstairs with the flower. He puts it on the bed. The knife is handy. Can these dream-like sequences end happily? A mirror breaks; the man enters the house again. Will he find her?