Avant-garde cinema is characterized by experimental filmmaking that often results in disorienting, abstract pieces that introduce ideas and challenge the boundaries of film. The avant-garde films of the 1950s were no different. This decade saw many artists and filmmakers from Marcel Duchamp to Jean Cocteau make some of their most iconic contributions to avant-garde cinema.

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Some of the weirdest avant-garde films contain entirely no narrative, are vocally anti-narrative, and lend to an entirely confusing experience. Others, however, simply provide an unorthodox or open-ended narrative for the viewer to unpack, that provides a slightly unusual yet still entertaining alternative to 1950s mainstream cinema.

Inauguration of The Pleasure Dome (1954)

Stills From Inauguration Of The Pleasure Dome (1954)

Kenneth Anger is an American experimental filmmaker who has been making short films since 1937. Anger’s 1954 film Inauguration of The Pleasure Dome presents a host of different characters, all dressed in elaborate fancy dress. The film provides no clear narrative, but simply a montage of elaborately presented personas.

The film presents many overlapping images, as well as instances where the different characters interact with one another. The characters consist of a selection of goddesses, as well as characters from the occult and various mythologies. Some of the characters include Lilith, Aphrodite, and Cesare from the 1920 film The Cabinet Of Dr. Calagari.

Odds & Ends (1959)

Odds and Ends (1959) Jane Conger Belson Shimané

Jane Conger Belson Shimané’s 1959 film Odds & Ends serves as a parody of Avant-Garde film, in the form of a rambling commentary accompanied by a montage of images. The voice-over of the film deconstructs jazz and poetry, and their inherent differences.

The rambling narration declares that “poetry and Jazz are utterly opposed”, while at times verging on nonsense, and commenting on society. The film was narrated by the sound artist Henry Jacobs, who worked on exactly the kind of films that Belson Shimané’s film set out to critique, such as those of her husband Jordan Belson.

Orpheus (1950)

Orpheus (French: Orphée) is a 1950 French film directed by Jean Cocteau and is the second installment in Cocteau’s Orphic Trilogy. The film is an adaptation of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and follows two young poets and a princess, and their connection to the underworld through poetic radio transmissions.

After a young poet is killed, he travels with the princess to the Zone, through a mirror. Orpheus is a dreamy film about death and poetry that takes a mirror-doorway into the underworld, as a sleeping poet attempts to understand what is happening to the world around him.

Anticipation Of The Night (1958)

Stills from Anticipation Of The Night (1958)

Stan Brakhage’s 1958 film Anticipation Of The Night, functions as an abstract video diary. The film opens with a series of dark and abstract shots but develops into a point-of-view journey through the day of the protagonist, who is only visible as a shadow.

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The film progresses throughout the day, with much focus on children at play. The close of the film is made up of an extended montage of traveling quickly through the night among trees and wild animals, mixed with scenes of the sleeping children until the shadow meets the sudden end of its journey.

A Movie (1958)

Stills from A Movie (1958)

A Movie is a 1958 experimental collage film by Bruce Conner that disorients the audience with multiple false announcements of the end of the film. Within the first minute "end of part four" appears on the screen, followed by footage of a woman undressing and then "The End".

The film then continues on to visuals of cars losing control and crashing, with one plummeting off the side of a cliff before "The End" is again falsely announced. A Movie progresses in this way for almost twelve minutes with the scenes becoming increasingly more obscure.

Eyewash (1959)

Stills from Eyewash (1959)

Eyewash is a completely silent short film created by American Avant-Garde filmmaker Robert Breer, that contains a series of seemingly unrelated abstract images flashing on the screen. Some of the longer-lasting and repeated images in the film include videos of a young child, a red glove, and various hand-drawn shapes.

The film has no coherent narrative and opens and closes with the title 'Eyewash' filling the screen. The film was included in the Treasure From American Film Archives series, in the "Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947–1986" collection.

N.Y., N.Y. (1957)

Two stills from N.Y.,N.Y. (1957)

N.Y., N.Y. is a 1957 film by Francis Thompson. The film presents "A Day In New York", with footage of buildings, trains, and a host of things that capture the everyday life of New York City. Each scene of the film, however, is distorted in some way.

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Throughout the film, the visuals have the appearance of being shot through prisms, and mirrors, or distorting lenses. The film takes on such a distorted abstracted perspective of New York City, that it is impossible to recognize many of the scenes, while it is equally impossible to ignore that they are scenes of everyday life.

8×8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements (1957)

Two stills from 8×8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements (1957)

8×8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements is a 1957 film directed in collaboration with Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, and Jean Cocteau. The film opens with a description of itself as a "fairytale for grownups", and compares itself to the work of Lewis Carroll.

In one of the opening scenes, two men play a game of chess in the park, until the chessboard suddenly gets up and runs away. Several chess pieces then fall down a hole in the ground, much like Lewis Carroll's Alice, and a film ensues that is made up of a series of eight episodes, all inspired by the game of chess, but otherwise unrelated.

The Astronauts (1959)

Two stills from Walerian Borowczyk’s 1959 film The Astronauts

Walerian Borowczyk’s 1959 film The Astronauts (French: Les Astronautes) follows an inventor who builds a spacecraft and after taking it for a test drive, follows a rocket into space. Thus begins a 1950s Sci-Fi space adventure with a homemade spacecraft covered in newspaper and an owl for a companion.

The inventor explores space, comes across planets made of humans, gets involved in a stand-off between two other spacecraft which he puts an end to with a piece of fruit, and sends messages down to his friends on earth to inform them of his adventures before plummeting back down to earth.

Howlings in Favour of De Sade (1952)

Two stills and cover art of Howlings in Favour of De Sade

Howlings in Favour of De Sade (French: Hurlements en faveur de Sade) is a 1952 film directed by Guy Debord. The film is completely devoid of images, and the running time is made up of an alternating white and black screen. The screen is white when there is accompanying audio, and black when there is complete silence.

Accompanying the white screens are different speeches and dialogues taken from various works and entirely unrelated to one another so that it becomes almost impossible to deduce any meaning from the content of the film. The film ends after twenty-four minutes of a black screen and complete silence.

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