Avant-Garde Cinema: Theory, Practice, Criticism (Q3103)
Alice Gavin / School of English / A.Gavin@sussex.ac.uk
Office hours: Wednesday 2pm-4pm / Arts B B226
Screenings:
Seminars:
Mondays, 4pm-5.30pm / Fulton 213
Thursdays, 2pm-3.30pm / Fulton 114
Assessment
Essay 1 (1500 words / 30% of final mark)
Due Friday 7 November at School of English office (no later than 4pm).
In this assignment you will be asked to explore one of the films we have watched. Your
essay should be primarily organised around a close reading of a single shot or short
succession of shots (no more than one minute in duration).
Essay 2 (2000 words / 70% of final mark)
Due Monday 5 January at School of English office no later than 4pm
Essay topics for this essay will be distributed after reading week. You will be expected to
show evidence of close reading, thorough argumentation and some independent research.
Readings
Many of these are available in the Course Reader, which is available on Study Direct along
with additional readings. Please PRINT the Reader and bring it with you to class. For week
3, please also purchase your own copy of J. D. Rhodes, Meshes of the Afternoon
(BFI/Palgrave, 2011). Additionally, suggested supplementary texts include:
P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film (Oxford UP, 2002)
This book has been the standard history of American avant-garde cinema for almost three decades. It’s not
bad to have around as a point of reference, but its methods and its canon are limited.
A.L. Rees, A History of Experimental Film and Video (London: BFI, 1999)
This is another synoptic history of experimental film and video, but with an emphasis on British
filmmaking.
Web Resources
The websites below are excellent resources for expanding your access to and understanding
of the diverse, porous, and ever-expanding (anti-)canon of experimental moving image
production.
http://www.ubu.com/film/
http://www.luxonline.org.uk/index.html (mainly British ‘artist’ films)
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Week 1
(Screening: 22 September / Seminar: 25 September)
Introduction / The Historic Avant-Garde
Screening
 Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
 Un Chien Andalou (Buñuel and Dalì, 1929)
Seminar Reading
 Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, Michael Shaw, trans. (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1984). Chapters 3 and 4. On Study Direct.
 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1936)
in Lawrence Rainey, ed., Modernism: An Anthology (Malden, MA and Oxford:
Blackwell, 2005), pp. 1095-1113 CR
 André Breton, ‘Manifesto of Surrealism’ (1924), in Lawrence Rainey, ed., Modernism:
An Anthology (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 718-741 CR
 Annette Michelson, ‘Introduction’, in Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga
Vertov, Annette Michelson, ed. and Kevin O’Brien, trans. (Berkeley: UCalifornia
Press, 1984), pp. v-lxi CR
Week 2
(Screening: 29 September / Seminar 2 October)
Cinematic Specificity
Screening
 Anemic Cinema (Marcel Duchamp, 1925)
 Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell, 1936)
 Alone, Life Wastes Andy Hardy (Martin Arnold, 1998)
Seminar Reading
 André Bazin, ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’, from Bazin, What is
Cinema? vol. 1, Hugh Gray, ed. and trans. (Berkeley: UCalifornia Press, 1967), pp. 916 CR
 Eisenstein, Sergei. “The Dramaturgy of Film Form.” (1929) In The Eisenstein Reader.
Richard Taylor, ed. and trans. 93-110. London: British Film Institute, 1998. CR
 Dziga Vertov, We: Variant of a Manifesto’; ‘The Birth of Kino-Eye’; ‘On
Kinopravda’; ‘Artistic Drama and Kino-Eye’, all from Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga
Vertov, Annette Michelson, ed. and Kevin O’Brien, trans. (Berkeley: UCalifornia
Press, 1984) CR
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Week 3
(Screening: 6 October / Seminar: 9 October)
Maya Deren
Screening
 Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, 1943)
 At Land (Maya Deren, 1944)
 A Study in Choreography for the Camera (Maya Deren, 1945)
Seminar Reading
 T.S. Eliot, ‘Traditional and the Individual Talent’, in The Sacred Wood (London and
NY: Routledge, 1989 [first published 1920]), pp. 47-59 CR
 Maya Deren, An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form, and Film, in Bruce McPherson (ed).,
Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film (McPherson & Co, 2005)
 Maya Deren, ‘Cinema as an Art Form’; ‘Planning by Eye’; ‘Magic is New’ (all in
Essential Deren)
 John David Rhodes, Meshes of the Afternoon (BFI/Palgrave, 2011).
Week 4
(Screening: 13 October / Seminar: 16 October)
Stan Brakhage
Screening
(all by Stan Brakhage)
 Desistfilm (1954)
 Wedlock House: An Intercourse (1959)
 Window Water Baby Moving (1959)
 Mothlight (1963)
 Dog Star Man (1961-1964)
 Eye Myth (1967)
 The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (1971)
 The Garden of Earthly Delights(1981)
 Night Music (1986)
 Study in Color and Black and White (1993)
 Black Ice (1994)
Seminar Reading
 Stan Brakhage, ‘Metaphors on Vision’; ‘The Camera Eye’; ‘My Eye’. All from Stan
Brakhage, Essential Brakhage, (esp. pp. 12-36) CR
 David E. James, Allegories of Cinema (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989), pp. 29-57 CR
 Annette Michelson, ‘Camera Lucida/Camera Obscura’, in David E. James, ed. Stan
Brakhage: Filmmaker (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2005), pp. 36-56. CR
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Week 5
(Screening: 20 October / Seminar: 23 October)
Andy Warhol
Screening
(both by Andy Warhol)
 Blow Job (1963)
 My Hustler (1965)
Seminar Reading
 David E. James, Allegories of Cinema (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989), pp. 58-84 CR
 Hal Foster, ‘Who’s Afraid of the Neo-Avant Garde?’, in Foster, Return of the Real
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 1-33 CR
Week 6
(Screening: 27 October / Seminar: 30 October)
Samuel Beckett and Buster Keaton
Screening
 Film (wr. Samuel Beckett, dir. Alan Schneider, 1965)
 One Week (dir. Buster Keaton with Edward Cline, 1920)
 The Scarecrow (dir. Buster Keaton with Edward Cline, 1920)
Seminar Reading
 Alice Gavin, Literature and Film, Dispositioned: Thought, Location, World (Palgrave,
2014). Chap. 4 and 5.
 Simon Critchley, ‘To be or Not to Be is Not the Question: On Beckett’s Film,’ Film
Philosophy 11 (2007), 108-121.
Week 7 NO SCREENING / NO SEMINAR
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Week 8
(Screening: 10 November / Seminar: 13 November)
Structural Film (New York)
Screening
 Zorn’s Lemma (Hollis Frampton, 1970)
 (nostalgia) (Hollis Frampton, 1971)
 Poetic Justice (Hollis Frampton, 1972) please watch this film in your own time at
http://www.ubu.com/film/frampton_justice.html
 Bad Burns (Paul Sharits, 1982)
Seminar Reading
 Hollis Frampton, ‘Lecture’; ‘For a Metahistory of Film: Commonplace Notes and
Hypotheses’; ‘A Pentagram for Conjuring the Narrative’; ‘Letter to Stan Brakhage’;
‘Letter to Donald Richie’. From On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters CR
 Paul Sharits, ‘Hearing:Seeing’, in P. Adams Sitney, ed. The Avant-Garde Film Reader
(NY: NYU Press, 1978), pp. 255-260 CR
 Paul Sharits, from ‘Words Per Page’, in P. Adams Sitney, ed. The Avant-Garde Film
Reader (NY: NYU Press, 1978), pp. 260-263 CR
 Theodor Adorno, ‘Art-object’ from Adorno, Minima Moralia, E.F.N. Jephcott,
trans. (London: Verso, 2000 [1951]), pp. 225-227
 Annette Michelson, ‘Gnosis and Iconoclasm: A Case Study of Cinephilia’, October
83 (Winter 1998), pp. 3-18 CR
Week 9
(Screening: 17 November / Seminar: 20 November)
Materialist Filmmaking
Screening
 Hall (Peter Gidal, 1968/69)
 Little Dog for Roger (Malcolm Le Grice, 1967)
 Slides (Annabel Nicolson, 1971)
 Broadwalk (William Raban, 1972)
 At the Academy (Guy Sherwin, 1974)
 The Girl Chewing Gum (John Smith, 1976)
Seminar Reading
 Peter Gidal, Materialist Film (London and NY: Routledge, 1989), pp. xiii-37. CR
 Stephen Heath, ‘Repetition Time: Notes around Structural/Materialist Film’, in
Questions of Cinema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1981), pp. 165-175. CR
 Peter Wollen, ‘ “Ontology” and “Materialism” in Film’, in Readings and Writings
(London:Verson 1982), 189-207. CR
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Week 10
(Screening: 24 November / Seminar: 27 November)
Kenneth Anger
Screening
 Fireworks (Kenneth Anger, 1947)
 Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (Kenneth Anger, 1954)
Seminar Reading
 Kenneth Anger, Hollywood Bablyon (NY: Bell Publishing, 1975), pp. 3-12 CR
 David E. James, Allegories of Cinema (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989), pp. 149-156.
CR
 Matthew Tinkcom, Working Like a Homosexual: Camp, Capital, Cinema (Duhram, NC:
Duke UP, 2002), pp. 119-153. CR
Week 11
(Screening: 1 December / Seminar: 4 December)
1970s Experimental Feminism
Screening
 Dyketactics (Barbara Hammer, 1974)
 Multiple Orgasm (Barbara Hammer, 1976)
 Double Strength (Barbara Hammer, 1978)
 Riddles of the Sphinx (Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, 1977)
Seminar Reading
 Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16:3 (1975): 6-18
 Barbara Hammer and John David Rhodes, ‘Film is Thinking: A Conversation
Across Distance’, World Picture 7
http://worldpicturejournal.com/WP_7/Hammer.html
 Barbara Hammer, selections from Hammer! On Study Direct (also Core)
 Grey Youmans, ‘Performing Essentialism: Reassessing Barbara Hammer’s Films of
the 1970s’, Camera Obscura 81:27 (2012), pp. 101-135 On Study Direct
Week 12
(Screening: 1 December / Seminar: 4 December)
Contemporary Experimental Feminist Practice
Screening:
 The Deadman (Peggy Ahwesh, 1989)
Seminar Reading:
 John David Rhodes, ‘Peggy Ahwesh,’ Senses of Cinema, Great Directors:
http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/ahwesh.html
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