Early Avant-Garde Films

The term “avant-garde” refers here quite freely to early European and American experimental cinematic practices as opposed to “continuity editing” of classical Hollywood. The genre can be traced back to two silents: Abel Gance’s La Folie du Docteur Tube (1915) and Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920). That said, the American pre-WW2 branch should not be entirely subordinated to European influence. It has it’s own aesthetic culture in films as such Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand’s Manhatta (1921) and Slavko Vorkapich and Robert Florey’s The Life and Death of 9413: a...