Courses / Undergraduate

Summer 2016

  • History of Avant-Garde Film

    129 | CCN: 28220

    Eileen Jones

    Date and Time: TUWTH 1130-2P, 142 DWINELLE

    4 Units

    This course is a survey of the rich history and aesthetics of the international film Avant-Garde from the 1920s to the present. The course explores the development of a range of experimental film forms and practices, situating them in relation to the larger artistic, social, and intellectual contexts in which they arise. We look at the ways artists have not only created new film languages in order to express their unique ideas and vision, but also how they inverted alternative modes of production, distribution, and exhibition for their work. We examine the major formal modes of Avant-Garde cinema, moving between historical and current developments. These include abstract, surrealist/Dada, psychodrama, the lyric film-poem, autobiographical, materialist and structural forms, political and activist film, new narrative, recycled cinema, the film essay, feminist and queer cinemas, as well as expanded forms such as installation and web-based cinema.