Full of hits and misses but still worth watching!


Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s. Ranging from 2 to 34 minutes in length these 24 films reveal experimentation in cinema when it was still new. From my perspective this series is probably best viewed along with and in addition to the Edison four volume collection of Edison classics released between 1889 and 1916.

Together these collections show important efforts to really stake out the contours of this new medium of film.

Not too exciting


Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s. The music is bad - real bad. I had to run at 2X speed without sound to get through most of them. As a film student I wanted to explore early film and try to see the roots of development and experimentation.

I was disappointed in most of the movies as I was looking for early innovations in film making. I only saw them in Manhatta and H2O. These two made the disk purchase acceptable.

Manhatta has some innivative shots and lighting study. It was able to tell a story of greatness without words in spite of the terrible music. Interesting early camera placement and angles.

H2O had some fascinating play with light and water reflections. I was mesmerized.

Back to the future


Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s. This collection of avant-garde films shows what the medium of film is still capable of yet today. What astonishes is how surprising some of the results here can be from the cameras of such noted surrealist artists as Marcel Duchamp and Ferdinard Léger: the former's "L'Étoile du Mer" seems as new and exciting as it did seventy-five years ago, and the latter's "ballet Méchanique" is still very funny. Some of the work by later famous filmmakers is not as impressive as you might hope (an early film by Orson Welles is the style of "Caligari" tells us very little about the great works he would later produce), but the collection is worth owning if only for its rare presentation of Dimitri Kirsanov's astonishing 1926 work "Ménilmontant," which Pauline Kael rated as one of the greatest films ever made (and which she late in life was her personal favorite of all movies). Kirsanov shows here how the kind of sophisticated style associated with the Russians such as Eisenstein (though "Ménilmontant" was made, almost impossible to believe, before he could possibly have seen "Potemkin") might be wedded to the kind of sentimental work more closely associated with D.W. Griffith (the two idealized innocent sisters seem especially in their early scenes reminiscent of the Gish sisters in ORPHANS OF THE STORM). The beginning sequence of the double ax murder in the rural home is one of the most disturbing murders ever captured on film; it stays with you for years later, as does Kirsanov's stunning use of montage to evoke mood, fantasy, or memory as well as strictly diegetic occurrences.

Great Movie Collection of Avant Garde Shorts!


Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s. I was really pleased to buy this collection at a reasonable price. I am a cinema buff so I love to take a look at the Avant Garde. It was a real pleasure to find Menilmontant. I saw this film as a freshman in college and always remembered it. It was amazing, beautiful and unlike any film I'd ever seen before. After seeing it there, I never heard of it and never saw it again. I was thrilled to see it in this collection and it is a great film. The musical accompaniment is usually very good though a bit too somber in parts. It is true that the films have a calming effect on a person and the music was meant to portray that feeling. I highly recommend this collection. It is best in small bites and I wouldn't try to watch it as you would watch a feature film. The shorts require a lot of attention and it can wane after awhile. Better to appreciate them in short viewings.

A cinematic historical potpourri...a rare treat!


Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s. This collection is a unique addition for any film/history buff. A must have and well worth the purchase.