Lecture 4 – Avant garde movements. Soviet cinema

Avant garde movements are cultural leaderships that experiment with new ways of thought and create artistic currents, trends and theoretical schools. Avant garde movements are imaginative and open up new styles, new forms, new political agendas promoting paradigm shifts in the way in which we understand and act upon the world. They develop in multiple cultural dimensions: painting, literature, theatre, architecture and cinema. Cinema as the new mass medium utilising on technological progress attracts the attention and inspires avant-garde movements who utilise it for experimenting their ideas and theories.

Futurism (Italy) Fascination with the new and the original. Looking forward into the future and projecting it on the present. Celebrating technological development, industrialisation and the transformation of society. Admiring the conquest of nature by humanity.

Surrealism (France) Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality. A revolutionary movement that seeks to liberate humanity and abolish the established bourgeois order. Origins in Dadaism which rejected the discipline imposed by linguistic forms in self expression. Automatic writing trying to write freely avoiding self censorship.

Expressionism (Germany) A reaction against positivism, naturalism and impressionism. Trying to discover and convey the feeling of being alive, communicating emotions. Using colour, inviting subjective readings of the artwork. Not interested in producing a real depiction of things but more a striking artifice. Supernatural and legendary elements like romanticism. Aiming in expressing psychological states of being, not representing reality. In cinema expressionist films dealt with madness, insanity, betrayal etc.

Formalism (Russia) The creation of a new cinematic language of film through the rejection of all bourgeois conventions including acting. Radical experimentation with the form which was considered to be more important from the content. Politically engaged, applying Marxist theory / the dialectic to cultural production. Montage theory of juxtaposing conflicting images inviting the public in making the synthesis. Revolutionary movement in revolutionary situation.

Social revolution: the Russian experience. It is important to understand that cultural movements are determined by the social and historical conditions of their production. The early 20^th century was a revolutionary period. The rise of the socialist movements in Europe. The outbreak of revolution in Russia, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria and Hungary. The success of the soviet example and Bolshevism as a revolutionary current setting the international example. Overthrowing the bourgeois social and cultural order, not just its political economy.   

Early soviet cinema reflected the revolutionary process of its production. Lenin himself declared the cinema as the most important art that should accompany the socialist transformation. Cinema was seen as both entertaining and educating Soviet citizens. Productivist tendency, filming in factories, using ordinary people in the films, demystifying the production process by showing the producers themselves while making materially the film. Using extensive montage in order to produce dynamic, discontinuous, narrative editing. Blurring the category of entertaining film and educational documentary. Individuals representing classes or social groups. Multiple shots of individual actions. Adjusting time of each shot, overlapping editing, frequent cuts in order to stimulate the spectator.

Screening: Battleship Potemkin

Filmed to honour the anniversary of the 1905 revolution. Oppression and exploitation of the masses

repression and violence by the state, revolution as possible and as the only solution

socialism as the human goal, collective action as the means

rotten meat, violent officers, punishments, refusal to obey, subversion, mass mobilisation and solidarity

unity of the people in struggle across the country, victory

Soviet montage:

Eisenstein's theory of montage: collision of thesis and antithesis to produce deals with the juxtaposition of shots and attractions (eg lighting, camera angle, or subject movement) within shots to create meaning. Synthesis of contradictory shots as a way to sock and agitate the audience

a) metric montage – conflict caused by length of shots

b) rhythmic montage – conflict generated by rhythm of movement within shots

c) tonal montage – shots arranged according to the tone or emotional sound

d) over-tonal montage – a synthesis of metric, rhythmic and tonal montage not at the level of the individual frame but of the whole film

e) intellectual montage – juxtaposition of images to serve as a visual metaphor, inducing audience to think on the concepts