UCLA Film and Television Archives "The Love of Zero"
(1928) is going to be shown at the James Bridges Theater Feb. 24 as
a part of the "Unseen Cinema" avant-garde film series.
By Azadeh Farahmand
Daily Bruin Contributor
At a time when a saturated field and commercial market give
little room and visibility to uninhibited creativity in cinema, the
“Unseen Cinema” series opens vaults of the past to
early decades in film history when experimentation and an
unexplored field gave exhilarating freedom to the pioneers of
cinema.
As a part of UCLA Film and Television Archive programs, the
traveling series “Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde
Film 1893-1941″ begins tonight at the UCLA James Bridges
Theater. “Unseen Cinema,” playing through Feb. 24,
brings together rare and never-before seen footage of early
experimental and alternative works that influenced the cinema of
subsequent decades.
Conventional histories attempt to locate the beginning of the
American avant-garde and many place it in 1943 with Maya
Deren’s “Meshes of the Afternoon.” In 1995,
Hollywood Entertainment Museum curator Jan-Christopher
Horak’s book, “Lovers of Cinema” explored the
“pre” history and created a substantial challenge to
the traditional account of when it all began.
“Unseen Cinema” shares this driving principle of
pressing the boundaries of history to trace early practices that
pushed at the confines of cinema.
“What happened was that many of these films were either
lost and their reception forgotten,” said Horak, who will
introduce the Feb. 23 program.
Avant-garde has taken a variety of nuances that predominantly
set it against established rules. It relates, for example, to
distinct aesthetics, such as modernist exploration of form, or
techniques that emphasize states of mind. It also refers to a
“studio-free” mode of production and independent
financing.
While these nuances link the avant-garde to a
“reactionary” impetus, for Bruce Posner, the curator of
the series, the avant-garde resonates of novelty and
originality.
“Literally, being avant-garde (means) being advanced
“¦ being the firsts who were out there on the edge, who made
the rules as opposed to who broke them,” Posner said.
The series includes early pieces by directors who later worked
within the Hollywood studio system, such as D W. Griffith, Frank
Capra, Busby Berkeley and Mary Ellen Buke, who is, arguably, the
pioneer of the music video.
Included in tonight’s opening program is one of the most
famous films of the 1920s. “Life and Death of 9413-A
Hollywood Extra” was made by three up-and-coming Hollywood
filmmakers at home on a weekend for less than $100. One of the
filmmakers showed the film to Charles Chaplin.
“Chaplin went berserk and had a huge party and showed it
to everybody in Hollywood,” Posner said. “Because of
that, the film got a distribution deal and “¦ all these guys
got better jobs in Hollywood.”
The Feb. 23rd program, “A F***ing Miracle: Revolution in
Technique and Form,” showcases a diverse sampling of early
visions. It includes films about exploring techniques of camera and
experimenting with visual effects.
There are also a group of mini Eiffel Tower films, avant-garde
classics such as “Ballet Mecanique,” “The Soul of
Cypress,” which contains a provocative sexual sequence, and
medical films about epileptic seizures.
“Somebody “¦ around 1919 when (“˜The Soul of
Cypress’) was made, cut a hardcore pornographic film “¦
and they edited it in,” Posner said. “You are seeing it
now in 2002 and wow, it is completely displaced. It is edited into
the film in such a way that it is part of the story, so it fits;
but it’s funny, it is very post-modern.”
The provocative and innovative nature of the avant-garde has
stimulated past and present filmmakers.
“I definitely get a lot of inspiration from it,”
said Thyrale Thai, third-year UCLA graduate film student.
“You see a succession of images that are very familiar in the
everyday life but never thought of them that way. These
juxtapositions create sparks in my head that are very
inspiring.”
In addition to stylistic novelty, the series unveils the record
of an ephemeral past that can only come to life on the silver
screen.
“With the early works especially, there is a kind of
visual pleasure in seeing the way things used to look and things
that don’t look anything like that anymore,” Horak
said.
The delight and the learning experience that the avant-garde
cinema offers are indeed reasons not only to celebrate the unique
opportunity to see the otherwise unavailable early works on the big
screen, but also to ask for more.
“I am very excited about the series,” said Rita
Gonzales, a UCLA Ph.D. candidate in film. “And I think that
the UCLA Film Archive owes it to Los Angeles ““ to students
and young people especially ““ to show more of experimental
and avant-garde films and videos on a regular basis.”
FILM: For more information on “Unseen
Cinema,” visit www.cinema.ucla.edu.