some (graphic) ideas about image/plan relations

hannes meyer, mümliswil school


sergei eisenstein, montage sequence

stefan van biljon, the third man: film analysis



bernard tschumi, manhattan transcripts

Avant-Garde: Film Analysis

...each spectator creates an image along the representational guidance suggested by the author, leading him/her unswervingly towards knowing and experiencing the theme in accordance with his/her own personality, in his/her own individual way, proceeding from his/her own experience, from his/her own imagination, from the texture of his/her associations, from the features of his/her own character, temper, and social status.

- Sergei Eisenstein, Notes of a Film Director

The following films were created to do many things… but, most of all, they were intended to experiment with what the director/maker understood to be the very character or objective of film making.  Through them, the spectator is challenged; he/she is asked to comprehend not only the work itself but to understand reality differently. 

You will be assigned one of these films to study and diagram:

Charles Scheeler and Paul Strand, Manhatta, 1921

László Moholy-Nagy, Berliner Stilleben, 1926

Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy, Ballet Mecanique, 1924

Joseph Cornell, Rose Hobart, 1936

Maya Deren and Alexander Hamid, Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943

Bruce Conner, A Movie, 1958

Stan Brakhage, Dog Star Man, 1961-64

Chris Marker, La Jetée, 1962

Ernie Gehr, Serene Velocity, 1970

Bruce Baillie, Quick Billy, 1971

Pat O’Neil, Water and Power, 1989

Peter Tscherkassky, Outer Space, 1999

Eve Sussman, 89 Seconds at Alcázar, 2004

Alessandro Cima, Detective City Angel, 2011

For this analysis, begin by watching the film a number of times: looking to understand the narrative, the visual qualities, the emotions that it might try to evoke, etc.  Following this, do some research on the author(s) of the film and find any information that you can find that describes and elucidates it; see if this information matches what you understood the film to be about or its intention. 

Never try to convey your idea to the audience – it is a thankless and senseless task.  Show them life, and they’ll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.

– Andrei Tarkovski

One of the criticisms made of cinema is its distance from its audience.  Here, distance is defined as physical detachment; the passive perception of luminous information projected on a screen or other device.  In response, the filmmaker has sought to shock the viewers and denaturalize their experience in order to wake them up from their blasé slumber.  Avant-garde film, in particular, has sought ways through which to challenge the conventions of viewing through techniques that manipulate the image, narrative, time, experience, etc.  It has attempted to revive, through various means, that primal moment of 1896 when fear and terror gripped the movie going audience upon seeing for the first-time a train approaching on screen.

Architects have been fascinated with film since its earliest moments; in the relationship between time-space and in its ability to capture the urban environment.  In some cases, the filmic medium became a metaphor for the movement of the body through space and of new ways of seeing and organizing the world.  In others, the mechanical eye of the camera was understood as a metaphor for modernity itself and of the new inhabitants of the metropolitan environment.  Collaborations between filmmakers and architects had also been a large part of the investment by both mediums in each other: architects had been called on to design the spaces and worlds within which the actions take place.  This role, however, gradually declined as the camera became more able to, itself, create or capture distinct visions of space and the world. 

The function of this studio is to explore the role of avant-garde film and its potentials to generate new perceptions of the world; to challenge and displace; to shock and to heighten awareness.  The aim of the studio is to explore and to give form and architectural intentions to avant-gardist filmic techniques and technologies through representational and discursive strategies (textual, graphic, three-dimensional, composite, filmic, etc.).  As a point of departure, we will utilize representation and film to alter and modify our perceptions and understandings of the world and of lived experience itself.

Programmatically, the studio will articulate these investigations through a proposed Center for Avant-Garde Films for National University (UNAM) in Mexico City.