Browsing by Subject "Avant-garde film"
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Item Modernism's mirror : Peter Kubelka, painting, and European avant-garde film(2006-05) Neilson, Amy Archer; Krukowski, SamanthaIn this paper, I examine the influence of modernist ideas surrounding the visual arts - primarily painting - on the development of European avant-garde film. I trace this phenomenon from early cinema with an emphasis on German "graphic" filmmakers, and argue that the modernist focus on the essence of each medium reached its apex for film in the work of Peter Kubelka, whose1960 "Arnulf Rainer" is given a lengthy formal analysis. I identify the contradictions inherent in this approach, and discuss alternative modernist approaches by filmmakers such as Ernie Gehr and Michael Snow. I conclude with a synopsis of how modernist painting is once again finding itself modeled in time-based arts, this time with video and new media.Item Yours truly : Fireworks and its psychosexual passage(2016-05) Edwards, Thomas Pearson; Reynolds, Ann Morris; Flaherty, GeorgeIn his 1947 film, Fireworks, young Kenneth Anger – both director and star actor – enacts a sexual rite of passage, using film techniques, theoretical methods, and visual tropes that descend from the avant-garde—favoring especially Surrealism and its penchant for psychoanalysis. Through the popularization of psychoanalysis in the United States and the influx of European avant-garde culture in Los Angeles in the 1940s, this thesis explores how Anger used these channels of influence to characterize his own fantastic sexual coming of age. The thesis reads select shots from the film to propose moments where form, Anger’s acting, and composition create meaning specific to an avant-garde, Surrealist context. In doing so, the paper identifies Anger’s filmic and ideological influences, allowing a historically and socially positioned viewing of Fireworks. Finally, the thesis addresses the implications of the growing trend in the 1940s for filmmakers and actors to exhibit their intimate, often sexual dreams and fantasies in the form of avant-garde, psychoanalytic work. The project’s supporting research includes mainly primary source material from little magazines, relevant avant-garde works preceding Anger’s film, film theory and criticism by Parker Tyler, and psychoanalytic texts by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.