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PR Avant-Garde 3: Experimental Cinema 1922-1954 on DVD Nov 24

Kino International

ontinuing its collaboration with the George Eastman House Collection and The Raymond Rohauer Collection, Kino International is now proud to make available a third edition of its highly celebrated Avant-Garde Experimental Cinema DVD set.

Kino Releases Avant-Garde 3: Experimental Cinema 1922-1954 on DVD

New York, NY - September 23, 2009 - Continuing its collaboration with the George Eastman House Collection and The Raymond Rohauer Collection, Kino International is now proud to make available a third edition of its highly celebrated Avant-Garde Experimental Cinema DVD set.

Priced at $29.95, Kino's 2-disc Avant-Garde 3: Experimental Cinema 1922-1954 will become available to the general public on November 24, 2009.

Kino's third volume of experimental films continues to illuminate the degree to which cinema's evolution has been influenced by those filmmakers who occupy its periphery - while offering new film aficionados a chance to discover some of the best examples of cinema's experimental side.

Danse Macabre (1922), Directed by Dudley Murphy.

From the little theaters of the 1920s to the ad hoc film societies of the '50s, avant-garde cinema knew no established form and held no predictable position.

And while the boundaries of its history are still hotly debated, avant-garde cinema's rough sensibilities informed and permeated the city symphonies of Alberto Cavalcanti, the visual music of Mary Ellen Bute and John Whitney, the classroom films of Sidney Peterson, the confessional film poems of Willard Maas and John E. Schmitz, the Lettrist cinema of Marc'O, and even marginal exploitation films and home movies.

One of this set's highlights is undoubtedly the 65-minute long Closed Vision (1953), directed by Marc-Gilbert Guillaumin (aka Marc'O) - one of the founders of Lettrism and the editor of the movement's short-lived journal Ion.

Often compared to fellow Lettrist and filmmaker Guy Debord, Marc'O began his career in experimental cinema by producing Jean Isidore Isou's famed Venom and Eternity, which can be found on Kino's second Avant-Garde set. Closed Vision, an abstract film about the inner life of a man strolling along the croisette in Cannes, debuted at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival with endorsements from Jean Cocteau and Luis Buñuel, but was rarely screened in the United States in recent years.

And while director Alberto Cavalcanti, born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is better known for his film-noir feature work (They Made Me a Fugitive; UK - 1947), his short ventures into experimental cinema left a lasting impression. After moving to France in 1920 to work for L'Herbier (L'Inhumaine), Cavalanti went on to direct his first experimental short (included in this set) Rien Que les Heures (Nothing But Time) six years later.

An experimental representation of a day in the life of Paris and its citizens, Rien would become the model for Cavalcanti's famed collaboration (in 1927) with Walter Ruttmann, a project called Berlin: Symphony of a Big City (Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt). In 1933, Cavalcanti returned to England to work for John Grierson's GPO Film Unit.

The Voices (1953), Directed by John E. Scmitz

Kino's Avant-Garde 3 also brings two classroom films by Sidney Peterson, the American Surrealist artist, writer and father of independent and experimental filmmaking in San Francisco. Peterson made San Francisco's first personal art films, as demonstrated in The Potted Psalm (1947) and The Cage (1947). Maybe just as important as the film's themselves, is the fact that these Surrealist classics inaugurated the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in Cinema film series, started by Frank Stauffacher in 1946.

Peterson is also known for having taught the nation's first fine art filmmaking courses at the California School of Fine Arts (today the San Francisco Art Institute).

Together with his students, he made a series of non-narrative short films that drew inspiration from post-WWII San Francisco. Two of his most famous shorts The Lead Shoes (1949) and The Petrified Dog (1948) are included in this set - the latter is loosely based on Alice in Wonderland.

Below, you can find a comprehensive list of all films in third collection of Kino's avant-garde collection. Other highlights include a 1928 version of the The Tell-tale Heart, by Charles F. Klein, The Uncomfortable Man, a 23-minute film partnership between Theodore Huff and Kent Munson, and the second experimental film from Dudley Murphy, Danse Macabre (1922), the director of the acclaimed Ballet Mécanique (1924).

DISC ONE

DANSE MACABRE
US 1922 Color Tinted 6 Min.
Dir: Dudley Murphy (Born 10 July1897, Winchester, Massachusetts, USA)

RIEN QUE LES HEURES (Nothing But Time)
US 1926 B&W 46 Min.
Dir: Alberto Cavalcanti (Born Febriary 6,1897, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Music by Larry Marotta

THE TELL-TALE HEART
US 1928 B&W 20 Min.
Dir: Charles F. Klein *28 January1898, Andernach, Germany)
Music by Sue Harshe

TARANTELLA
US 1940 Color 4 Min.
Dir: Mary Ellen Bute (21 November1906, Houston, Texas, USA), Ted Nemeth

TOMATOS ANOTHER DAY
US 1930 B&W 7 Min.
Dir: James Sibley Watson (Born 10 August1894, New York, USA)

THE UNCOMFORTABLE MAN
US 1948 B&W 23 Min.
Intentionally silent ; Dir: Kent Munson, Theodore Huff

THE PETRIFIED DOG
US 1948 B&W 18 Min.
Dir: Sidney Peterson (born November 15, 1905 - Oakland, California, USA)

THE LEAD SHOES
US 1949 B&W 16 Min.
Dir: Sidney Peterson (born November 15, 1905 - Oakland, California, USA)

FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON
US 1951 B&W 14 Min.
Dir: James Broughton (Born November 10, 1913, Modesto, California, USA)


DISC TWO


PLAGUE SUMMER
US 1951 B&W 15 Min.
Dir: Chester Kessler

LA MORT DU CERF
(The Death of a Stag)
France 1951 B&W 12 Min.
Dir: Dimitri Kirsanoff (born March 6, 1899 - Tartu, Estonia)

IMAGE IN THE SNOW
US 1952 B&W 26 Min.
Dir: Willard Maas (Born, 24 June1906, USA)

CELERY STALKS AT MIDNIGHT
France 1952 Color 3 Min.
Dir: John Whitney

THE VOICES
US 1953 B&W 14 Min.
Dir: John E. Schmitz

CLOSED VISION
US 1954 B&W 65 Min.
Dir: Marc'O


BONUS FILMS


TOMATOS ANOTHER DAY (outtakes)
US 1930 B&W 5 Min. Dir: James Sibley Watson

EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF A GIN BOTTLE
US 1925 B&W 11 Min. Dir: Bela von Block
Music by Paul Mercer, Bruce Bennett and Davis Petterson

SCHICHLEGRUBER DOING THE LAMBETH WALK
UK 1941 B&W 2 Min. Dir: Charles A. Ridley

DEMENTIA (excerpt)
US 1955 B&W 5 Min. Dir: John Parker

FALLING PINK
US circa late 1950s Color 9 Min. Dir: Robert H. Spring
Music by Paul Mercer and Bruce Bennett

Kino International

Posted by: News Editor - November 3, 2009, 6:35 am - PR
Keywords: indie, film