Over past couple weeks, I read; "Lovers of Cinema; the first American film avant-garde, 1919-1945", edited by Jan-Christopher Horak, 1995.
The First American Film Avant-Garde, 1919-1945, by Jan-Christopher Horak
Page 14-15, "the 1950s avant-gardists proclaimed themselves to be independent filmmakers, actively engage in the production of 'art', while the earlier generation viewed themselves as cineastes, as lovers of cinema, as 'amateurs' willing to work in any arena furthering the cause of film art, even if it meant working for hire"
Page 19, "Professionalism was equated with commercialism, while amateurism connoted artistic integrity. This discourse also identifies personal expression with formal experimentation, a dualism repeated continually in contemporary aesthetic manifestos and reviews, and echoed in the polemics of the second American avant-garde.""
Page 21, 1926 re-release of Caligari.
Page 27, shady distributors.
Page 29, [early avant-garde] "demonstrated a certain wild eclecticism, innovativeness, and at times naivete that was only possible for American filmmakers."
Page 30, American romanticism, which manifests itself in a longing for (wo)man's reunification with nature".
Page 33, neoriealist 1931 "Cityof Contrasts" with comical soundtrack.
Page 36, "Nature as a visual metaphor for the expression of human subjectivity"
Page 44, "introspection" by Sara Aledge
Page 45, "Lullaby" by painter Boris Deotsch is "reminiscent of Caligari" (image on page 46).
Page 51, Theodore Huff parody films "starred children, giving the films an ambiguous sexuality and implicating the subject in the director's slightly perverse gaze".
Page 51, William Vance's "Hearts of the Age" (1934) was, according to Orson Wells, a parody of "Blood of a Poet".
Page 52, Satirical film about making surreal film "Evan As You and I" by Roger Barlow, Harry Hay, and Leroy Robbins.
The Limits of Experimentation in Hollywood by Kristin Thompson
Page 84-85, "Beggers on Horseback" (1925) was widely seen as the first major Hollywood film influenced by German Expressionism"
Robert Florey and the Hollywood Avant-Garde by Brian Taves
Bio and stories about Robert Florey who made four films with enthusiastic help from Hollywood.
Americans in Paris, Man Ray and Dudley Murphy by William Moritz
Page 120, funny story about Man Ray having dispute over distribution and then stealing and disassembling a film.
Page 126, more Man Ray stories.
Page 121-127, Dudley Murphy story - who would be the deleted collaborator on the Legar film "Ballet Mechanique".
Page 130, "Sports Parade" by Murphy in 1932 is compared to "Wavelength".
Startling Angles: amateur film and the early avant-garde by Patricia Zimmermann
Page 137, 1923 article "The Importance of Doing Things Badly" (find?)
Page 139, "amateur film, whether reproducing Hollywood narrative style or experimenting with film form, was located within a discourse searching for a revival of artistic dignity through the integrity of individual filmmaking"
Page 149-150, "Cinematic Design", 1931 book by Leonard Hacker, "explicated form, rhythm, color, and relativity in motion pictures".
U.S. Modernism and the Emergence of "The Right Wing of Film Art"; the films of James Sibley Watson, Jr., and Melville Webber by Lisa Cartwright
Page 157, "Watson claims that he and Webber selected the Poe story as the basis for their first film collaboration precisely because they had not read it in ten or fifteen years, and therefore would be free of its influence".
Page 159, The Dial: "a transcendentalist quarterly of religion and the arts ... explores mysticism and progressive revision of Christian doctrine in the light of modern science".
Page 169-170, EE Cummings' role in The Fall of the House of Usher.
Page 171, Ezra Pound influence on ee cummings via Vortisism.
"attachment of a gyroscope to the shutter, and the substitution of a prismatic ring in place of the shutter"
Page 172, Geometry and poetry and film.
Page 173, Photo of Sodom optical printer.
Theodore Huff; historian and filmmaker by Chuck Kleinhans
Page 183, Huff is an intellectual generalist and "an intellectual handyman". Wrote first book on Chaplin.
Page 187, "amateur contests ... reveal a gap between ambition and accomplishment"
Page 197, Huff collected stills and large collection of silent film music and cue sheets.
Page 202, "FOOF" = Friend of old film.
Ralph Steiner by Scott MacDonald
Page 209, "the 87 second passage that immediately follows the 'question mark' is, in my view, teh most beautiful in the film ... exquisite imagery".
Pge 212, "effects that some independent and industry filmmakers labor years to create ... are, Steiner proves, available to anyone willing to look more carefully at he world".
Page 220, "organized religion and the film industry ... ignored the realities of hunger in favor of empty illusionism"
Pie In The Sky: "subjective camera images became self reflexive moments"
Page 222, Hands: government propaganda film by Steiner.
Page 224-225, The City; compared to Koyaanisqatsi.
Straight Shots and Crooked Plots: Social documentary and the avant-garde in the 1930s by Charles Wolfe
Page 235, Grierson's and others one line definitions of "documentary", a new term in the 1930s.
Page 237, Leger's writings quoted on fundamental materials of photographic art.
Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler's Manhatta by Jan-Christopher Horak
Page 267, "Manhatta is in fact central to film modernism's project of deconstructing Renaissance perspective in favor of multiple, reflexive points of view"
Page 278, argument supporting the intertitles as part of the original plan.
The City Viewed; the films of Leyda, Browning, and Weinberg by William Uricchio
Page 287, list of city films of the 1930s.
Page 288, alternatives to description (travelogues) or interpretation (Nanook of the North) is offered by avant-garde.
Page 292, shift from an essentially romantic tradition of self-expression to a socially engaged and often critical aesthetic.
Machines That Give Birth to Images; Douglss Crockwell by Tom Gunning
Page 335, A/G flmmakers "filmmaking not only defined [his/her] lifestyle, it also subsumed it"
Page 336, "Charles Ives ... noted that innovative ideas seem to be more readily accepted in business than in official American culture and academia" (then more discussion of affect of teaching careers).
Page 337, "[Crockwell's] commercial work ... was produced with the traditional hand directed tools ... his experimental work .. was a product of machines".
Page 340, "Crockwell's machines were created... in imitation of, and homage to... the mutoscope"
Page 341, "While the projected motion pictures ... were inspired by ... magic lantern slides ... the peep show devices ... derive from such single-viewer devices as the stereoscope".
Page 342, Mutoscope remained limited to brief doses of scopic pleasure, an attraction associated with either eroticism or pure curiosity, lacking clearly defined social benefits."
Page 343, discuss sequential art in terms of mutoscope. Word: "simulacrum" which Christine cites "Disneyland" as an example.
Page 346-347, quoting Crockwell: "others have allowed the music to dominate, even to keying every motion to a musical beat. I believe the beauties of abstract animation in their own right"
Page 352, Crockwell describes wax animation he patented: "this solid block contains within itself the past, present and future of an animated sequence suspended in time" and goes on to refer to 4 dimensional objects.
Page 353, "enduring paradoxes of modern culture - the extraordinary exchange of connotations that take place between machines and sexuality"
Page 355, "At the turn of the century, motion pictures were initially exhibited as demonstrations of the apparatus that photographed and projected them, rather than simply images on the screen. ... Quite rapidly, however, the subject matter of the film or the name of the production company took pride of place, and the apparatuses were tucked away, far from the public's view. Except, of course, for the amusement arcade mutoscope.."
The First American Film Avant-Garde, 1919-1945, by Jan-Christopher Horak
Page 14-15, "the 1950s avant-gardists proclaimed themselves to be independent filmmakers, actively engage in the production of 'art', while the earlier generation viewed themselves as cineastes, as lovers of cinema, as 'amateurs' willing to work in any arena furthering the cause of film art, even if it meant working for hire"
Page 19, "Professionalism was equated with commercialism, while amateurism connoted artistic integrity. This discourse also identifies personal expression with formal experimentation, a dualism repeated continually in contemporary aesthetic manifestos and reviews, and echoed in the polemics of the second American avant-garde.""
Page 21, 1926 re-release of Caligari.
Page 27, shady distributors.
Page 29, [early avant-garde] "demonstrated a certain wild eclecticism, innovativeness, and at times naivete that was only possible for American filmmakers."
Page 30, American romanticism, which manifests itself in a longing for (wo)man's reunification with nature".
Page 33, neoriealist 1931 "Cityof Contrasts" with comical soundtrack.
Page 36, "Nature as a visual metaphor for the expression of human subjectivity"
Page 44, "introspection" by Sara Aledge
Page 45, "Lullaby" by painter Boris Deotsch is "reminiscent of Caligari" (image on page 46).
Page 51, Theodore Huff parody films "starred children, giving the films an ambiguous sexuality and implicating the subject in the director's slightly perverse gaze".
Page 51, William Vance's "Hearts of the Age" (1934) was, according to Orson Wells, a parody of "Blood of a Poet".
Page 52, Satirical film about making surreal film "Evan As You and I" by Roger Barlow, Harry Hay, and Leroy Robbins.
The Limits of Experimentation in Hollywood by Kristin Thompson
Page 84-85, "Beggers on Horseback" (1925) was widely seen as the first major Hollywood film influenced by German Expressionism"
Robert Florey and the Hollywood Avant-Garde by Brian Taves
Bio and stories about Robert Florey who made four films with enthusiastic help from Hollywood.
Americans in Paris, Man Ray and Dudley Murphy by William Moritz
Page 120, funny story about Man Ray having dispute over distribution and then stealing and disassembling a film.
Page 126, more Man Ray stories.
Page 121-127, Dudley Murphy story - who would be the deleted collaborator on the Legar film "Ballet Mechanique".
Page 130, "Sports Parade" by Murphy in 1932 is compared to "Wavelength".
Startling Angles: amateur film and the early avant-garde by Patricia Zimmermann
Page 137, 1923 article "The Importance of Doing Things Badly" (find?)
Page 139, "amateur film, whether reproducing Hollywood narrative style or experimenting with film form, was located within a discourse searching for a revival of artistic dignity through the integrity of individual filmmaking"
Page 149-150, "Cinematic Design", 1931 book by Leonard Hacker, "explicated form, rhythm, color, and relativity in motion pictures".
U.S. Modernism and the Emergence of "The Right Wing of Film Art"; the films of James Sibley Watson, Jr., and Melville Webber by Lisa Cartwright
Page 157, "Watson claims that he and Webber selected the Poe story as the basis for their first film collaboration precisely because they had not read it in ten or fifteen years, and therefore would be free of its influence".
Page 159, The Dial: "a transcendentalist quarterly of religion and the arts ... explores mysticism and progressive revision of Christian doctrine in the light of modern science".
Page 169-170, EE Cummings' role in The Fall of the House of Usher.
Page 171, Ezra Pound influence on ee cummings via Vortisism.
"attachment of a gyroscope to the shutter, and the substitution of a prismatic ring in place of the shutter"
Page 172, Geometry and poetry and film.
Page 173, Photo of Sodom optical printer.
Theodore Huff; historian and filmmaker by Chuck Kleinhans
Page 183, Huff is an intellectual generalist and "an intellectual handyman". Wrote first book on Chaplin.
Page 187, "amateur contests ... reveal a gap between ambition and accomplishment"
Page 197, Huff collected stills and large collection of silent film music and cue sheets.
Page 202, "FOOF" = Friend of old film.
Ralph Steiner by Scott MacDonald
Page 209, "the 87 second passage that immediately follows the 'question mark' is, in my view, teh most beautiful in the film ... exquisite imagery".
Pge 212, "effects that some independent and industry filmmakers labor years to create ... are, Steiner proves, available to anyone willing to look more carefully at he world".
Page 220, "organized religion and the film industry ... ignored the realities of hunger in favor of empty illusionism"
Pie In The Sky: "subjective camera images became self reflexive moments"
Page 222, Hands: government propaganda film by Steiner.
Page 224-225, The City; compared to Koyaanisqatsi.
Straight Shots and Crooked Plots: Social documentary and the avant-garde in the 1930s by Charles Wolfe
Page 235, Grierson's and others one line definitions of "documentary", a new term in the 1930s.
Page 237, Leger's writings quoted on fundamental materials of photographic art.
Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler's Manhatta by Jan-Christopher Horak
Page 267, "Manhatta is in fact central to film modernism's project of deconstructing Renaissance perspective in favor of multiple, reflexive points of view"
Page 278, argument supporting the intertitles as part of the original plan.
The City Viewed; the films of Leyda, Browning, and Weinberg by William Uricchio
Page 287, list of city films of the 1930s.
Page 288, alternatives to description (travelogues) or interpretation (Nanook of the North) is offered by avant-garde.
Page 292, shift from an essentially romantic tradition of self-expression to a socially engaged and often critical aesthetic.
Mary Ellen Bute by Lauren Rabinovitz
Page 317, "Tension between film's elitist modernist aesthetics and their popular reception as pretty amusements." (thought: is this why McLaren is not written about as a/g filmmaker?)
Page 319, Brute and Leon Theremin with the color organ.
Page 324, Collaboration with McLaren (Spook Sport)
Page 326, "she adopted the oscilloscope as her 'true pencil of light'"
Page 328, "her publicity statements especially opposed the modernist distanciation from mass tastes"
Page 335, A/G flmmakers "filmmaking not only defined [his/her] lifestyle, it also subsumed it"
Page 336, "Charles Ives ... noted that innovative ideas seem to be more readily accepted in business than in official American culture and academia" (then more discussion of affect of teaching careers).
Page 337, "[Crockwell's] commercial work ... was produced with the traditional hand directed tools ... his experimental work .. was a product of machines".
Page 340, "Crockwell's machines were created... in imitation of, and homage to... the mutoscope"
Page 341, "While the projected motion pictures ... were inspired by ... magic lantern slides ... the peep show devices ... derive from such single-viewer devices as the stereoscope".
Page 342, Mutoscope remained limited to brief doses of scopic pleasure, an attraction associated with either eroticism or pure curiosity, lacking clearly defined social benefits."
Page 343, discuss sequential art in terms of mutoscope. Word: "simulacrum" which Christine cites "Disneyland" as an example.
Page 346-347, quoting Crockwell: "others have allowed the music to dominate, even to keying every motion to a musical beat. I believe the beauties of abstract animation in their own right"
Page 352, Crockwell describes wax animation he patented: "this solid block contains within itself the past, present and future of an animated sequence suspended in time" and goes on to refer to 4 dimensional objects.
Page 353, "enduring paradoxes of modern culture - the extraordinary exchange of connotations that take place between machines and sexuality"
Page 355, "At the turn of the century, motion pictures were initially exhibited as demonstrations of the apparatus that photographed and projected them, rather than simply images on the screen. ... Quite rapidly, however, the subject matter of the film or the name of the production company took pride of place, and the apparatuses were tucked away, far from the public's view. Except, of course, for the amusement arcade mutoscope.."
