Favorite Experimental/Avant-Garde Films
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- DirectorHans RichterBlack and white rectangular images fade in and out of the screen. Their movement make them sometimes look like they're panning from side to side. Their movement also make the black and white individually change from foreground to background and visa versa.
- DirectorRené ClairStarsJean BörlinInge FrïssFrancis PicabiaAn absolute dada movie. Somebody gets killed, his coffin gets out of control and after a chase it stops. The person gets out of it and let everybody who followed the coffin dissapear.
- DirectorSergei EisensteinStarsGrigoriy AleksandrovMaksim ShtraukhMikhail GomorovA group of oppressed factory workers go on strike in pre-revolutionary Russia.
- DirectorWalter RuttmannStarsPaul von HindenburgThis movie shows us one day in Berlin, the rhythm of that time, starting at the earliest morning and ends in the deepest night.
- DirectorRobert FloreySlavko VorkapichStarsJules RaucourtVoya GeorgeRobert FloreyA wannabe movie star experiences the surreal horrors of dehumanization at the bottom of Hollywood's social ladder as his hopes for success vanish and his identity is reduced to a number.
- DirectorGermaine DulacStarsAlex AllinLucien BatailleGenica AthanasiouObsessed with a general's woman, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.
- DirectorMan RayStarsKiki of MontparnasseAndré de la RivièreRobert DesnosTwo people stand on a road, out of focus. Seen distorted through a glass, they retire upstairs to a bedroom where she undresses. He says, "Adieu." Images: the beautiful girl, a starfish in a jar, city scenes, newspapers, tugboats. More images: starfish, the girl. "How beautiful she is." Repeatedly. He advances up the stair, knife in hand, starfish on the step. Three people stand on a road, out of focus. "How beautiful she was." "How beautiful she is." "Beautiful."
- DirectorHans RichterStarsWerner GraeffWalter GronostayPaul HindemithHans Richter, noted for his abstract shorts, has everyday objects rebelling against their daily routine.
- DirectorDziga VertovStarsMikhail KaufmanElizaveta SvilovaA man travels around a city with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling invention.
- DirectorLuis BuñuelStarsPierre BatcheffSimone MareuilLuis BuñuelLuis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí present 16 minutes of bizarre, surreal imagery.
- DirectorLuis BuñuelStarsGaston ModotLya LysCaridad de LaberdesqueA surrealist tale of a man and a woman who are passionately in love with each other, but their attempts to consummate that passion are constantly thwarted by their families, the Church, and bourgeois society.
- DirectorJean CocteauStarsEnrique RiveroElizabeth Lee MillerPauline CartonTold in four episodes - an unnamed artist is transported through a mirror into another dimension, where he travels through various bizarre scenarios.
- DirectorErnst MoermanStarsJacqueline ArpéFrançoise BertL. DegrooteIn this surrealist piece of avant-garde generation of Belgian cinema, French masked master of crime Fantômas travels through the world seeking his beloved Elvire. He destroys all decency in his trip, as a great mischief-maker.
- DirectorMaya DerenAlexander HammidStarsMaya DerenAlexander HammidA woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space, her dark inner desires play out on-screen.
- DirectorMaya DerenStarsMarcel DuchampPajorita MattaThe surrealist film shows repetitive imagery involving a string fashioned in a bizarre, almost spiderweb-like pattern over the hands of several individuals, most notably an unnamed young woman and an elderly gentleman.
- DirectorMaya DerenStarsJohn CageMaya DerenAlexander HammidSilently, a woman wakes on a beach as the tides go in reverse. Her dreamscape unfolds as she tries to locate a chess piece traveling from the beach to a party to a country road and then back.
- DirectorHans RichterStarsJack BittnerLibby HolmanJosh WhiteAfter learning how to look inside himself, a poetic bum sells people vivid dreams.
- DirectorWilhelm FreddieJørgen RoosStarsAgnete ChristensenWilhelm FreddieJørgen RoosAn experimental animated short film by Jørgen Roos and surrealist painter Wilhelm Freddie.
- DirectorJean CocteauStarsJean MaraisFrançois PérierMaría CasaresA poet in love with Death follows his unhappy wife into the underworld.
- DirectorIsidore IsouStarsIsidore IsouJean-Louis BarraultBlanchette BrunoyIn this experimental film, Isidore Isou, the leader of the lettrist movement, lashes out at conventional cinema and offers a revolutionary form of movie-making: through scratching and bleaching the film, through desynchronizing the soundtrack and the visual track, through deconstructing the story, he aims to renew the seventh art the same way he tried to revolutionize the literary world.
- DirectorStan BrakhageStarsWalter NewcombThis way madness - or experimental filmmaking - lies. A solitary man in coat and tie enters an apartment that may be a converted garage. It's midnight. He appears agitated and distraught. He throws a glass of water in his face and laughs. He takes off the coat and tie. His moods swing. He stares at a light bulb. He removes his shirt. He lights a cigarette. He looks at a book. He does something drastic and self-destructive. He opens doors to a garden that we see as a film's negative. We see his face as if peering around a plant. The garden doors close behind him.
- DirectorJean CocteauHans RichterStarsJean ArpPaul BowlesCeal BrysonIt is a fairy tale for the subconscious based on the game of chess. Partly Sigmund Freud, partly Lewis Carroll.
- DirectorBruce ConnerStarsTheodore RooseveltClips of atomic explosions, pornography, and B-movies are spliced together to evoke certain emotions.
- DirectorStan VanderbeekThis film uses stop motion animation of still photographs to convey images of politics and science in the nuclear era. The advancement of science allows man to do things he never would have been able to do without, for good or bad. Politicians are either behind the scenes manipulating those scientists or are using that science for their own goals, primarily in the space race. Everyday items and people are projected upwards - many in the form of rockets - followed by iconic structures, such as the Empire State Building, the US Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower and the Kremlim, being rocketed skyward as visual representations of that race into space.
- DirectorStan BrakhageJoseph CornellA short film by Stan Brakhage in which New York City's Third Avenue elevated train is filmed before its destruction.
- DirectorStan BrakhageStarsStan BrakhageMyrrena SchwegmannJane WodeningStan Brakhage films the birth of his first child, Myrrena.
- DirectorJean CocteauStarsJean CocteauFrançoise ArnoulClaudine AugerThe Poet looks back over his life and work, recalling his inspirations and obsessions.
- DirectorHans RichterA comprehensive portrait of the Dada movement featuring original poems and prose spoken by their creators: Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Raoul Hausmann, Richard Huelsenbeck, and Kurt Schwitters.
- DirectorJonas MekasStarsAdolfas MekasFrances StillmanBen CarruthersA depressed woman, Barbara, is on the verge of suicide while a man she meets in a church and a married couple try to convince her that life is worth living.
- DirectorKurt KrenStarsUrsula HolzbauerOtto MuehlA subversive and experimental film from director Kurt Kren.
- DirectorStan BrakhageA "found foliage" film composed of insects, leaves, and other detritus sandwiched between two strips of perforated tape.
- DirectorStan BrakhageStarsStan BrakhageJane WodeningAn experimental film from Stan Brakhage in which a man and his dog ascend a wooded mountain.
- DirectorDon LevyProduced by the Nuffiled Foundation of Unit for the History of ideas, Time Is, directed by Don Levy (Herostratus), is an experimental collage film looking at the scientific problems connected with the nature of time. Alternating between original and `found' footage such as newsreels, sports footage, nature photography, the film uses a number of techniques including slow motion, time-lapse and single-frame filming, negative imagery and juxtaposition.
- DirectorLuis BuñuelStarsClaudio BrookSilvia PinalEnrique Álvarez FélixSimon, a deeply religious man living in the 4th century, wants to be nearer to God so he climbs a column. The Devil wants him to come down to Earth and is trying to seduce him.
- DirectorWallace BermanStarsDean Stockwell
- DirectorDon LevyStarsMichael GothardGabriella LicudiPeter StephensWhen young poet Max (Michael Gothard) hires a marketing company to turn his suicide-by-jumping into a mass-media spectacle, he finds that his subversive intentions are quickly diluted into a reactionary gesture, and his motivations are revealed as a desperate attempt to seek attention through celebrity.
- DirectorDusan MakavejevStarsEva RasSlobodan AligrudicRuzica SokicA young female starts a love relationship with a serious young man. However, while he is away on business, she gets lonely and succumbs to her colleague's desires.
- DirectorCarolee SchneemannStarsCarolee SchneemannJames TenneyAn experimental short in which a couple engaged in lovemaking is superimposed over ocean and beach scenes.
- DirectorKurt KrenStarsGünter BrusThe London Film-Makers' Cooperative calls this film the "Eating, Drinking, Pissing and Shiting film".
- DirectorJean-Luc GodardStarsMireille DarcJean YanneJean-Pierre KalfonA surreal tale of a married couple going on a road trip to visit the wife's parents with the intention of killing them for the inheritance.
- DirectorAlain Robbe-GrilletStarsJean-Louis TrintignantSylvie BréalZuzana KocúrikováOn the run from pursuing soldiers, a man hides in a small European town.
- DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsMax von SydowLiv UllmannGertrud FridhWhile vacationing on a remote German island with his younger pregnant wife, an artist has an emotional breakdown while confronting his repressed desires.
- DirectorCarmelo BeneStarsCarmelo BeneLydia MancinelliSalvatore SiniscalchiAvant Garde piece from Carmelo Bene. A series of vignettes drive a whirl of sounds, images and poetry - is it horror, is it comedy, make your own mind up.
- DirectorÉric DuvivierStarsJean Servais
- DirectorPere PortabellaStarsLucia BosèMario CabréRamón JuliaA woman walks by her home and finally takes a shower - She buy colored fabrics in a trade. A man visiting a post office - Succession of scenic pictures and semi-autonomous fading almost always unexpected. A series of situations or suite, though apparently unrelated, revolve around a thematic development that gives body and drive the story without resorting to the use of an anecdote as plot continuity.
- DirectorPier Paolo PasoliniStarsSilvana ManganoTerence StampMassimo GirottiA mysterious young man seduces each member of a bourgeois family. When he suddenly leaves, how will their lives change?
- DirectorMarco FerreriStarsMichel PiccoliAnita PallenbergGino LavagettoA man decides to cook for himself, but finds the revolver of John Dillinger hidden in his kitchen instead.
- DirectorPier Paolo PasoliniStarsPierre ClémentiJean-Pierre LéaudAlberto LionelloA man wandering in a volcanic desert forms a band of murderous cannibals. A post-war German industrialist learns that his son is unable to make decisions or form relationships.
- DirectorMichael SnowStarsAllan KaprowEmmett WilliamsMax NeuhausA camera in a classroom continuously sways back and forth at various speeds as people occasionally move around the setting.
- DirectorAggy ReadStarsJulie O'Brien
- DirectorJean BeaudinCe film se présente comme un long crescendo bâti avec des éléments symboliques de notre temps et opère une plongée spectaculaire dans le monde de l'inconscient. Des sonorités audacieuses créent un climat fantastique et arrache le spectateur à la réalité. Nous sommes en 1968, l'année des grandes contestations de masse.
- DirectorHollis FramptonStarsRosemarie CastoroGinger MichelsMarcia SteinbrecherA rhythmically edited alphabet composed of street and shop signs shot in New York City and other elements is gradually replaced by repeated seemingly abstract shots in this influential structuralist film.
- DirectorJacques BaratierStarsBernadette LafontBulle OgierJean-Baptiste ThiérréeA genuine performance film as Bernadette Laffont and Bulle Ogier engage, with reckless abandon, in a flurry of senseless destruction in a house at night. Somewhere between a hallucination and a nightmare. Both the explosive soundtrack and narration that accompanies the mayhem was provided by François Tusques.
- DirectorAlain Robbe-GrilletStarsCatherine JourdanPierre ZimmerRichard LeducA group of French students are drawn into the psychological and sexual games of a mysterious Dutchman. Once they sample his "fear powder" the students experience a series of hallucinations.
- DirectorJack ChambersA surreal sequence of images of nature and London, Ontario, life and death.
- DirectorAlejandro JodorowskyStarsAlejandro JodorowskyBrontis JodorowskyJosé LegarretaA mysterious black-clad gunfighter wanders a mystical Western landscape encountering multiple bizarre characters.
- DirectorShûji TerayamaStarsEimei SasakiMasahiro SaitoYukiko KobayashiAn angst-ridden teen dealing with his dysfunctional family hits the streets. The story is inter-cut with various psychedelic, energetic vignettes.
- DirectorDusan MakavejevStarsMilena DravicIvica VidovicJagoda KaloperAn homage to the work of psychologist Wilhelm Reich, matched with a story about a Yugoslavian girl's affair with a Russian skater. Sexual repression, social systems and the orgone theory are explored.
- DirectorShûji TerayamaStarsGoro AbashiriTarô ApolloShiro DemaemochiSet in a future in which children have overthrown adults, the film does not have a central narrative. It depicts a series of graphic tableaux in which children engage in cruel and abusive acts against the adults.
- DirectorPere PortabellaStarsChristopher LeeHerbert LomSoledad MirandaAn analysis of the construction mechanism for the magic in dominant narrative cinema though the filming of Count Dracula (1970), a commercial film by Jesús Franco.
- DirectorFernando ArrabalStarsAnouk FerjacNúria EspertMahdi ChaouchDuring Spanish Civil War, young Fando navigates parents' clashing ideologies after father's arrest. Explores his imagination, friendships, views on sex and death amid family upheaval. Questions mother, seeks father's fate.
- DirectorCarmelo BeneStarsCarmelo BeneLydia MancinelliAlfiero VincentiA psychedelic re-telling of the biblical story. Salome is the daughter of the second wife of King Herod. The King is infatuated with her and after she fails to seduce the prophet John (The Baptist) she dances for the King in order to ask for his execution. The story is told in a bizarre way of fast cuts, repetitive dialogue and extreme satire.
- DirectorPatrick BokanowskiStarsJean-Jacques ChoulJacques Delbosc d'AuzonClaus-Dieter ReentsA study of human anxieties about beauty, youth and objectification.
- DirectorKenneth AngerStarsKenneth AngerBobby BeausoleilDonald CammellEgyptian gods summons the angel Lucifer - in order to usher in a new occult age.
- DirectorPhilippe GarrelStarsNicoPhilippe GarrelChristian PäffgenA composition of symbolic, surreal and almost mystic images.
- DirectorJonas MekasStarsJonas MekasAdolfas MekasPola ChapelleFilmmaker Jonas Mekas creates an elegiac diary of a trip to his home country of Lithuania.
- DirectorJohannes SchaafStarsPer OscarssonRosemarie FendelOlimpiaA married couple of artists move to a utopian town known for its absolute freedom, but behind the surface perversion and violence are spreading.
- DirectorFernando ArrabalStarsGerard BorlantJean ChalonFrançois ChateletRunning away from the police, Aden goes to the desert where he meets an uncivilized man who has a special link with Mother-Earth. He ends up by convincing the hermit to come along with him into another desert... the big town!
- DirectorAlejandro JodorowskyStarsAlejandro JodorowskyHoracio SalinasZamira SaundersIn a corrupt, greed-fueled world, a powerful alchemist leads a messianic character and seven materialistic figures to the Holy Mountain, where they hope to achieve enlightenment.
- DirectorDusan MakavejevStarsCarole LaurePierre ClémentiAnna PrucnalAfter winning the "most virgin" contest, Miss Canada is married to a rich milk tycoon. But she quickly flees the marriage to experience the world around her, full of sweetness and anarchy.
- DirectorJacques RivetteStarsJuliet BertoDominique LabourierBulle OgierA mysteriously linked pair of young women find their daily lives preempted by a strange boudoir melodrama that plays itself out in a hallucinatory parallel reality.
- DirectorAntónio ReisStarsEvangelina Gil DelgadoJaime FernandesA documentary about a deceased psychiatric patient, Jaime Fernandes.
- DirectorShûji TerayamaStarsKaoru YachigusaKeiko NiitakaMasumi HarukawaA young boys' coming of age tale set in a strange, carnivalesque village becomes the recreation of a memory that the director has twenty years later.
- DirectorLouis MalleStarsCathryn HarrisonTherese GiehseAlexandra StewartTo escape a gender war, a girl flees to a remote farmhouse and becomes part of an extensive family's unusual, perhaps even supernatural, lifestyle.
- DirectorJean-Luc GodardStarsSandrine BattistellaPierre OudreyAlexandre RignaultAn analysis of the power relations in an ordinary family.
- DirectorJacques RivetteStarsJuliet BertoBulle OgierJean BabiléeThe Queen of the Night battles the Queen of the Sun over a magical diamond that will allow the winner to remain on Earth, specifically in modern day Paris.
- DirectorJacques RivetteStarsGeraldine ChaplinBernadette LafontKika MarkhamOn an island beach a woman vows to avenge her brother's death at the hands of a pirate leader. With help, the woman spies on the pirates and then gets a job as bodyguard to the pirate leader.
- DirectorAlberto CavalloneStarsMaria Pia LuziMartial BoscheroAngela DoriaInspired by Bataille and Sade, an original episodic erotic comedy.
- DirectorRaúl RuizStarsEva SimonetRobert DarmelSilke HumelA charming tale of murder, perversity and narrative echoes told through shots of barking dogs and a La jetée-like series of stills.
- DirectorDavid LynchStarsJack NanceCharlotte StewartAllen JosephHenry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.
- DirectorRaúl RuizStarsJean RougeulChantal PaleyJean RaynaudTwo narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series' significance.
- DirectorPierre ClémentiStarsNadine AlkanMichelle BernetMaurice Béjart"Chronicles of the Present Times" - An experimental trilogy comprising 'Visa De Censure No.X', 'Livre De Famille' and 'Anima Mundi'. New Old flows together footage from more than a decade of his wandering between scenes, sets, and drugs, an accelerated world tour through various iterations of the counterculture.
- DirectorFrans ZwartjesStarsHelen HedyMoniek ToeboschTrix ZwartjesScientists subjected women to dark and inhuman experiments, in which sexuality and cruelty are fused together
- DirectorIván ZuluetaStarsEusebio PoncelaCecilia RothWill MoreA low budget horror filmmaker gets in touch with an eccentric who is trying to film his consciousness during drug abuse.
- DirectorRaúl RuizStarsPascal BonitzerJean-Loup RivièreA man awakens to find himself immersed in a real-life scenario of a board game with an ever expanding cartography.
- DirectorPeter GreenawayStarsPeter WestleyAad WirtzMichael Murray92 BBC documentary-style shorts that record the lives of 92 victims of the VUE (Violent Unexplained Event), each with last names beginning with "Fall."
- DirectorAlain Robbe-GrilletStarsDaniel MesguichCyrielle ClairDaniel EmilforkWalter is told by his boss, Sara, to deliver an urgent letter to Henri de Corinthe. On the way he finds a beautiful woman he had been eying in a nightclub, lying in the road, bound up. He takes her to a villa to get a doctor, and ends up being locked in a bedroom with her. While she is making love to him, he has visions of surrealistic images from René Magritte's paintings. In the morning, the girl, Marie-Ange, has vanished, the villa looks derelict, and his neck is bleeding. Was it all just a nightmare?
- DirectorJan SvankmajerThree surreal depictions of failures of communication that occur on all levels of human society.
- DirectorRaúl RuizStarsHugues QuesterAnne AlvaroMelvil PoupaudA surreal odyssey in which a melancholic maidservant crosses paths with a homicidal little boy, travels to a tiny island and encounters a man with multiple personalities.
- DirectorPierre ClémentiStarsNadine ClémentiPierre ClémentiOlivier CorneilleNecrocity, a city of nightly terrors and a place where even the authorities seem to reinforce this state of mayhem, as a way to impose cruel laws and the use of police brutality with efficiency. While most of the underground citizens are only concerned about pleasures, drinking, using drugs, partying hard and all, a huge load of heroin has gone missing, and that's another indicative that a terrible crime wave is on the rise.
- DirectorJames BenningStarsRhonda BellElion SucherIn "Landscape Suicide" Benning continues his examination of Americana through the stories of two murderers. Ed Gein was a Wisconsin farmer and multiple murderer who taxidermied his victims in the 1950s. Bernadette Prott was a California teenager who stabbed a friend to death over an insult in 1984. Benning's distanced approach to such grisly material is as far removed as possible from sensationalism, however. Although the acts of murder are both bizarre and violent, Benning dwells on them only minimally, emphasizing instead the details of psychological motivation, which in both cases seem frighteningly mundane. Benning has created a script which is a masterpiece of understated colloquial writing, and the actors he employs to re-enact confessional testimony and incidents recounted in trial transcripts perform with a flatly convincing lack of affect reminiscent of Gary Gilmore. The two monologues are embedded in Benning's characteristic meditations of landscape: long shots of the Wisconsin farmlands, general stores, dirt roads and pick-up trucks, and the carefully tended lawns, swimming pools, sprawling bungalows and malls of the middle-class California suburb. These images are offered in the classically spare mise-en-scene which Benning has perfected in his work as a cinematic poet of the contemporary American environment. Here, in his most accessible film so far, the beautiful, open vistas are dense with the significance of the catastrophes they engendered
- DirectorJan SvankmajerStarsKristýna KohoutováCamilla PowerA surrealistic revision of Alice in Wonderland.
- DirectorPat O'NeillStarsJoel LorimenBeth BlockGeorge LockwoodA moving meditation on industrialization, focusing on the eerily desolate Owens Valley in California, made arid by the diversion of water from there to the city of Los Angeles.
- DirectorMargarida CordeiroAntónio ReisStarsAntónio Manuel BaptistaConstança CapdevilleCarlos Alberto GomesCordeiro's most abstract, conceptual and literary work. The film's collage structure gathers texts from multiple sources - including Kafka and Montaigne.
- DirectorStephen SayadianStarsMadeleine ReynalFox HarrisLaura AlbertThe granddaughter of an infamous doctor experiments with hormone and shock therapies at her asylum for the insane.
- DirectorCraig BaldwinStarsMaurice BishopJimmy CarterFidel CastroIn the year 1000, aliens from the planet Quetzalcoatl flee their dying planet and take refuge under the Earth's surface. Disturbed by 1950s American atomic testing, the aliens strike back at the USA in such varied schemes as the replicant Castro, the psychic vampire regime in Grenada and the Allende plot to alter the Earth's axis. Only covert action by the CIA can stop the dreaded Quetzals.
- DirectorJan SvankmajerStarsPetr MeisselGabriela WilhelmováBarbora HrzánováSix people unknowingly form a cycle of masturbation as they each cause others to privately indulge in their fetishes.
- DirectorCraig BaldwinStarsSean KilkoyneCaroline KoebelBeth LisickSet in 2007, a father and daughter try to discover why the planet has ended up as a polluted cesspool of toxic, corrupting transmissions where its citizens expend terrific energy pursuing the most base rewards of a vacuous consumer culture.
- DirectorDavid LynchStarsKarolina GruszkaKrzysztof MajchrzakGrace ZabriskieAs an actress begins to adopt the persona of her character in a film, her world becomes nightmarish and surreal.