Avant-Garde Film (P02482)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : LLC-P-P02482

This option is designed to provide students with a wide-ranging knowledge of avant-garde film theory and practice and its historical development throughout the twentieth century. It aims to create an awareness of the ways in which avant-garde filmmaking both departs from and deconstructs the mainstream.

Course Outline
This course is concerned with introducing students to a range of non-mainstream experimental works and with setting out the main
theoretical concepts with which they are related. It will assess the various ways in which artists and filmmakers have approached the cinema as both a visual and a political art, continually searching for new perceptual experiences. The first part of the course will outline the theoretical definitions of ‘avant-garde’ and the emergence of experimental forms of filmmaking from the artistic and literary movements of Futurism, Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, before moving on to examine the revival and flourishing of avant-garde
cinema in postwar America. It will then consider the impact of video and new digital media on the growth of moving image experimentation into the fields of performance and installation. The canonical works of the early European avant-garde – Germaine Dulac, Hans Richter, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Luis Buñuel, Fernand Léger, László Moholy-Nagy, Dziga Vertov – will therefore provide the foundations for an understanding of later developments in political subversion (Guy Debord, Isidore
Isou, Maurice Lemaitre), subjective narratives (Maya Deren) and vision (Stan Brakhage), Structural/Materialism (Peter Gidal, Hollis Frampton, Michael Snow) and multi-media, multi-screen installation art (Douglas Gordon, Malcolm Le Grice). The course will address specific issues within the field of avant-garde cinema, such as narrative, representation, materiality, reflexivity, spectatorship, time and space, and will encourage students to reflect on these issues in the light of new technologies and viewing contexts.

Entry Requirements

? Pre-requisites : Course is for students enrolled for MSc Film Studies, or for other LLC programmes, with the approval of the course convener.

Subject Areas

Home subject area

European Languages and Cultures - Common Courses, (School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, Schedule G)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : Semester 1 (Blocks 1-2)

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 10 weeks

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

Familiarity with the notion of the avant-garde and its relationship to the cinema. Ability to understand film in relation to other creative practices, such as painting, photography, poetry and performance. Ability critically to engage with a number of avant-garde works and identify the aesthetic and political questions raised by them.