The Man With a Movie Camera (1929), Kuroneko (1968), How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It) (2005), My Life to Live (1962), Nico-Icon (1995), Stop Making Sense (1984), The Caretaker (1964), Koyaanisqatsi (1982) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Avant-garde movies.
Storyline: Disney animators set pictures to Western classical music as Leopold Stokowski conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra. "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" features Mickey Mouse as an aspiring magician who oversteps his limits. "The Rite of Spring" tells the story of evolution, from single-celled animals to the death of the dinosaurs. "Dance of the Hours" is a comic ballet performed by ostriches, hippos, elephants, and alligators. "Night on Bald Mountain" and "Ave Maria" set the forces of darkness and light against each other as a devilish revel is interrupted by the coming of a new day.
Plot Keywords: animation, classical music, disney, fantasy, musical, experimental film, classic ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: At the Harry DeJour Playhouse in New York in the mid-2000s, John Waters emerges from a confessional onto a stage littered with trash. He tells stories. After a few about his childhood and early influences, he roughly follows the chronology of his career as a film director, relating anecdotes about the making of each film and letting those stories lead him to riffs on other topics. Gay references and wry observations about people's foibles and limits are constants. Waters' looks, too, are the butt of his jokes.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: comedy, stand-up comedy, documentary, humor, satire, independent film, director ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The life and times of Baltimore film maker and midnight movie pioneer, John Waters. Intercut with a 1972 interview of Waters are clips from his first films and recent interviews with his parents, his brother, Divine's mom, actors and crew, other directors, film critics, a film curator, psychologists, and Maryland's last censor, who shudders at the memory of Waters's pictures. Also included is footage of Waters making his early movies, culminating in an up-close and in-depth look at Pink Flamingos: the script, the set, the filming conditions, its editing, its distribution, and its impact. In sweet ways, this documentary is also a celebration of Divine (1945-1988).—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: documentary, film industry, independent film, cult film, filmmaking, avant-garde, low budget ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: As the wavering cry of the foghorn fills the air, the taciturn former lumberjack, Ephraim Winslow, and the grizzled lighthouse keeper, Thomas Wake, set foot in a secluded and perpetually grey islet off the coast of late-19th-century New England. For the following four weeks of back-breaking work and unfavourable conditions, the tight-lipped men will have no one else for company except for each other, forced to endure irritating idiosyncrasies, bottled-up resentment, and burgeoning hatred. Then, amid bad omens, a furious and unending squall maroons the pale beacon's keepers in the already inhospitable volcanic rock, paving the way for a prolonged period of feral hunger; excruciating agony; manic isolation, and horrible booze-addled visions. Now, the eerie stranglehold of insanity tightens. Is there an escape from the wall-less prison of the mind?—Nick Riganas
Plot Keywords: psychological horror, surreal, black and white, isolation, descent into madness, mythology, folklore ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Filmmaker Ron Mann looks at the history of marijuana, from early government propaganda newsreels to Ronald Reagan's war on drugs. Narrated by Woody Harrelson.
Plot Keywords: documentary, experimental, short film, avant-garde, surreal, minimalist, visual poetry ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Young Leo Lauzon is torn between two worlds - the squalid Montreal tenement that he inhabits with his severely dysfunctional (and largely insane) family, and the imaginative world that he constructs for himself through his writings, where he's Leolo Lozone, son of a Sicilian peasant (conceived in a bizarre act involving a tomato). And his experiences of growing up (especially his sexual development) affect his response to both these worlds...—Michael Brooke <michael@everyman.demon.co.uk>
Plot Keywords: psychological drama, coming of age, surrealism, family, fantasy, childhood, mental illness ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: From an anchorwoman to a homeless man, actress Cate Blanchett portrays 13 distinct characters in vignettes that incorporate timeless manifestos.
Plot Keywords: art, experimental, monologue, postmodern, philosophy, political, cultural ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In documentary style, events in Petrograd are re-enacted from the end of the monarchy in February of 1917 to the end of the provisional government and the decrees of peace and of land in November of that year. Lenin returns in April. In July, counter-revolutionaries put down a spontaneous revolt, and Lenin's arrest is ordered. By late October, the Bolsheviks are ready to strike: ten days will shake the world. While the Mensheviks vacillate, an advance guard infiltrates the palace. Anatov-Oveyenko leads the attack and signs the proclamation dissolving the provisional government.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: silent film, black and white, experimental film, avant-garde, classic film, art film, symbolism ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A memorably bizarre screen version of Lewis Carroll's novel 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', mixing one live actor (Alice) with a large variety of stop-motion animated creatures, ranging from the complex (the White Rabbit) to the incredibly simple (the Caterpillar, consisting of a sock, a couple of glass eyes and a pair of false teeth). The original story is followed reasonably faithfully, though those familiar with this director's other films won't be the least bit surprised by the numerous digressions into Svankmajer territory, living slabs of meat and all. As the opening narration says, it's a film made for children... perhaps?
Plot Keywords: fantasy, surrealism, animation, adaptation, dark fairy tale, stop motion, experimental film ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: It's a documentary about the life of eccentric comedian Frank Sidebottom who wore a huge papier-mache' head and whose true identity was a closely guarded secret until after he died. The 2014 Magnolia Pictures film titled Frank was inspired by his sensational mystery.—Willow Dancer
Plot Keywords: documentary, biography, music, comedy, art, creativity, british ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Six outwardly average individuals have elaborate fetishes they indulge with surreptitious care. A mousy letter carrier makes dough balls she grotesquely ingests before bed. A shop clerk fixates on a TV news reader while he builds a machine to massage and masturbate him. One of his customers makes an elaborate chicken costume for a voodoo-like scene with a doll resembling his plump neighbor. She, in turn, has a doll that resembles him, which she whips and dominates in an abandoned church. The TV news reader has her own fantasy involving carp. Her husband, who is indifferent to her, steals materials to fashion elaborate artifacts that he rubs, scrapes and rolls across his body.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: surrealism, black comedy, erotic, absurd, cult film, sexuality, experimental film ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In 1992, teenager Sandi Tan and her friends Sophie and Jasmine shot Singapore's first indie-a road movie called "Shirkers"-with their enigmatic American mentor, Georges Cardona. Sandi wrote the script and played the lead, a killer named S. After shooting wrapped, Georges vanished with all the footage! 20 years later, the 16mm cans are recovered in New Orleans, sending Sandi-now a novelist in Los Angeles-on a new personal odyssey across two continents and many media: 16mm, digital, Hi8, Super8, slides, animation and handwritten letters. A kaleidoscopic punk rock ghost story!
Plot Keywords: documentary, autobiographical, independent film, filmmaking, mystery, personal journey, creative process ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Barbara Rubin's twenty-nine-minute experimental film 'Christmas on Earth' caused a sensation when it first screened in New York City in 1963. Its orgy scenes, double projections and overlapping images shattered artistic conventions and announced a powerful new voice in the city's underground film scene. All the more remarkable that the vision belonged to an 18-year-old girl. A virtual Zelig of the '60s, Barbara Rubin introduced Andy Warhol to the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan to Kabbalah and bewitched Allen Ginsberg. The same unbridled creativity that inspired her to make films when women simply didn't, saw her breach yet another male domain, Orthodox Judaism, before her mysterious death at thirty-five years old. Life-long friend Jonas Mekas saved all her letters, creating a rich archive that film-maker Chuck Smith carefully sculpts into this fascinating portrait of a nearly forgotten artist. An avant-garde maverick, a rebel in a man's world, Barbara Rubin regains her rightful place in film history.
Plot Keywords: documentary, art, avant-garde, experimental film, 1960s, biography, film history ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: This drama depicts the misery of neglected children in big cities. 13 years old Bruno is of a good family, but since the death of his grandmother he spends most of his time alone, in a phantasy world, while his mother is away at work. But then he befriends the violent Jean-Roger, who's from a severely disturbed family, where nobody cares what he's doing. In school Jean-Roger drives their teacher into despair just for fun. To separate the two boys, she starts to stimulate Bruno's interests by giving him extra lessons. When Jean-Roger fears loosing his one and only friend, he becomes even more aggressive.—Tom Zoerner <Tom.Zoerner@informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Plot Keywords: music, rock, band, concert, documentary, live performance, uk ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Oshare (Gorgeous) is excited about spending summer vacation with her father, until she finds out that his beautiful, freakishly serene girlfriend Ryouko would be going as well. Oshare decides she will be going to her aunt's house in the country instead. She brings with her her friends from school - Fanta (who likes to take pictures, and daydreams a lot), KunFuu (who has very good reflexes), Gari/Prof (who is a major nerd), Sweet (who likes to clean), Mac (who eats a lot), and Melody (a musician). However, the girls are unaware that Oshare's aunt is actually dead and the house is actually haunted. When they arrive at the house, crazy events take place and the girls disappear one by one while slowly discovering the secret behind all the madness.
Plot Keywords: surrealism, horror, comedy, fantasy, cult film, experimental, absurd ...
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