Week 7: British Avant-Garde Films from from 1920s to 1930s
British Avant-Garde Film from the 1920s to 1930s reflected mostly the strong connection between music and images (or animated images). It seems true that British Avant-Garde films in such period time were put under the big influence of other big avant-garde movements, such as German’s expressionism, Soviet’s montage or France’s surrealism. However, the most important characteristic of those British Films was implied through the magnificent synchronization of symphony and dance’s movement of images on screen. More precisely, British Avant-Garde films addressed the beauty of visual music, cine-dance and Synesthesia.
Back to the abstract films (absolute films) in German, there was the beginning of the trend when filmmakers attempted to create the exquisite symphony based on basic cinematic elements: editing, synchronization, mixing and so on. However, instead of focus on the dynamic of symphony, Germany filmmakers swift the audience’s intention to the abstract ideas, abstract objects (geometry). Return to British Filmmakers, with a couple of famous names: Len Lye, Marry Ellen Bute and Norman McLaren, Avant-garde films completely reflected how music, symphony, melody and its emotion, narrative could cooperate at the same time. In another word, such films really oppressed the impression of audience not to the screen, but both the dance movement of images and music.
Begin with Tsulava by Len Lye, the complexity of some succession of images, which was metaphor of cells. Len Lye attempted to create the abstraction of organic shapes. The screen was split equally. For the first half of Tsulava, the movement of the succession of images was separated and parallel. Amazingly, with the synchronization of music, two successions begin to interact, move back and forth to each others. The organic shapes seems be made abstract, so it transformed to another shapes, form (human’s face, some body parts, may be). Somehow, I really sense the abstract narrative though such beautiful movements. They, in deep level of imagination, conveyed the tiny story, which was very hard and surreal to acknowledge. Swift to Color Box, the perfect synchronization of music and images continues to be well-made. In Color Box, we can sense the over-lapping of different colors. In addition, the existence of many dot, in color, quickly draw more and more the intention from the audience. With the same strategy, Free Radicals replaced the dot by the flexible lines. Without showy colors, the white lines in Free Radicals seems attaches permanently to black background. The title of film “Free Radicals” also was made abstractly by the transformation of white lines. It’s obviously that the movement in Free Radicals is not smooth as in Color Box. It’s more the synesthesia of symphony and images. The music, with mostly the sound from drums, was extremely rush. Such humpa-humpa melody with the fast movement of white lines brought to audience insecure emotion.
Synchromy No. 4: Escape was the first color film by Mary Ellen Bute. As being exactly as the inter-title of this film, the abstract story of Escape was the endeavor of a triangle to escape, free itself from the cage of horizontal lines. As we can see, the dramatic of symphony was suitable for the theme of images. It has its own intro, climax, the break in the middle, etc. Furthermore, Bute tried to used contrast color (dark side: black, bright side: orange, and some support color such as dark blue, white…) to create a strong tension between abstract and opposite, overlapped images. In the second film Tarantella, the synesthesia was addressed more clearly and strongly. The distortion of many different objects, lines and symbols create an abstract feeling and unstable emotion. The interference of inter-title and credit from the beginning of Tarantella were two of many art elements which pay an effort to “compose” a whole inconvenient symphony-image. As the first film, the visual-music in this film also was used to create the theme of synesthesia. Today, such visual effect (the dancing of the lines) can be seen in anywhere, such as the visual theme of software Window Media Player.
With the works of Norman McLaren, the truly dancing synchronization was completely conveyed, not by animated movements or abstract objects, but the real dancing ballet of dancers. Because McLaren still was an animator, he put the effect of animation in Pas de Deux, which was the dynamic of ballet dancing. In this short film, McLaren used an optical printer to re-create the dynamic of movements, the echo of dancing. Single element, such as the arrangement of lighting, the choreography, the dramatic story-telling, and so on, pays tribute to the whole smooth structure of the film. I especially find Pas de Deux extremely beautiful, attractive and dramatic. It’s a ballet film. For that reason, it also tells a love story. Somehow, the abstraction, which was created by the dynamic of ballet dancing, is very charming, magical and well-synchronized. Nevertheless, the music, the score also played a crucial role in this film. The music itself has ability to tell a dramatic story, with the support of the dancing and “visual effect”. Unfortunately, another film of Norman McLaren, Synchromie didn’t leave the impression as much as Pas de Deux. In this short film, McLaren returned to the simplicity of synchronization. It was the combination of music, movement of lines, images (square, rectangle, etc.). However, Synchromie is the opposite example of Pas de Deux in emotion. The odd, bizarre music (monotone) creates more and more the feeling of the chaos, the abstraction and the disorder.
