Juan Monroy — History of Film: American Avant-Garde

Rose Hobart
- Joseph Cornell, 1936
- collage film
  - East of Borneo (1931)
  - snippets of scenes featuring Rose Hobart
  - documentary about lunar eclipse
- music is from record Holiday in Brazil
- projected through a blue piece of glass
Meshes of the Afternoon
- Maya Deren, 1943
- trance film
- dancer
- criticism of Hollywood filmmaking
  - depiction of women
  - violence
  - expense: “I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick”
A Movie
- Bruce Conner, 1959
- compilation film
  - b-movies
  - newsreels
  - soft-core
  - novelty
- music is from Ottorino Respighi, Pines of Rome
- “This is a Movie"
- comment on what “a movie” is…
  - cheesy explosions
  - sex tease
Window Baby Water Moving
- Stan Brakhage, 1959
- lyrical film
- filming the birth of his son
- graphic depiction of birth
- but used color and shading to make a poem
Scorpio Rising
- Kenneth Anger, 1964
- scenes of…
  - occult
  - biker subculture
  - homosexuality
  - Catholicism
  - Nazism
- music consist of 13 pop songs
- inspired by Anger’s return to US from Paris
- felt like American culture was a foreign culture
- Suarez: “Pop, Queer, or Fascist”
Fuses
- Carolee Schneeman, 1964–1967
- painter and filmmaker
- filmed her and her then-boyfriend James Tenney having sex
- “painted” the film: burned, scratched, staining, drawing on the film
- wanted to have a woman depict her own sexuality
  - distinct from pornography and classical art
  - reaction to Brakhage films, include Window Baby Water Moving
T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G
- Paul Sharits, 1968
- flicker film
- structuralist filmmaker
- investigates the material nature of film
- film is a set of flickers that join together in our mind
  - images
  - sound