Have a look at the list below, it can be said that all experimented with cinematography, structure, time, lighting, perspective and other technical aspects of film.
Within the structure of experimental film there lies no set structure.
Even: As You and I
Hilarious short spoof on Surrealism about a group of amateur film-makers that want to enter a film competition and after much head-scratching, try to make a surreal piece. Film-making humor, plus the actual short ('Afternoon of a Rubberband') containing random weirdness for its own sake and a funny spoof on Richter and Un Chien Andalou.
Part 1
Metropolis
Fritz Lang's masterpiece of expressionistic sci-fi visually pioneered the way for most futuristic movies like Blade Runner and Brazil. This world is separated into thinkers, who live comfortably on the top-side megapolis which they designed, and the workers, who live in a dark underground city and run the massive machinery under intensive labor. Both have no clue how the other world runs, the workers growing increasingly agitated, but inspired by an underground preacher, Maria, and awaiting the coming of the Heart, a mediator between both worlds. Joh plots to replace Maria with a robot while his son visits the underworld, in shock of what he sees. This movie doesn't just use melodramatic expressionism, it encapsulates it in its bigger, overwhelming, dark imagery of the cities, catacombs, and masses of people, and backs it all with grand, dramatic, symphonic music. Mixed with the science-fiction are some surreal dreams involving a huge machine turning into a man-eating Moloch, and statues of the seven sins and death coming alive cut together with an astounding sequence of an erotic dance of a robotic woman contorting and gyrating her body to a mass of hungry, insane eyeballs. Unforgettable classic that needs to be seen once by everyone despite its 'silly' and melodramatic approach, not only because it's a pioneer, but because it's still a unique, magical and astonishing experience today. Scenes are still missing, but the restored version has both the grander music, and inter titles that fill in the missing plot elements.
There It Is
The works of Buster Keaton and the forgotten Charles Bowers frequently throw logic out the window in favor of inventive and striking sight gags. But this short by Bowers takes this approach to an extreme of madcap and strange insanity. A strange Fuzz-Faced Phantom is haunting the Frisbie home, causing pants to dance, objects to disappear, floating through their living room and energetically setting up one strange occurrence after another that usually involves a mixture of practical joke, surprising inventiveness and scare. They call Scotland Yard for help (an actual yard with Scots) who sends Bowers and his weird bug-in-a-matchbox assistant to do battle with the bearded apparition. Endless inventiveness.
Here is a list of notable experimental filmmakers you might want to research, Ive included some of their films below.
Hans Richter (was a member of the Dada movement and practically the first avant-garde and abstract film-maker in the beginning of the 1920s),
br />
Luis Bunuel (the classic surrealist and a father of the movement),
Jean Cocteau (a classic surrealist. Cocteau was a multi-talented gay artist who tried his hand at writing, poetry, filming, painting and music)
Maya Deren (early, interesting, experimental film-maker of short silent films that make use of heavy psychological symbolism to explore themes of identity and society)
Sidney Peterson (what makes Peterson unusual is his use of surrealism and free associative sight gags and strange imagery in addition to the dull technical staples of experimental cinematography),
Stan Brakhage (one of the most notable and well-known experimental movie-makers who made almost 400 films in 50 years, most of them shorts ranging from a length of seconds to minutes)
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James Broughton (A playful, joyous, bisexual poet and experimental film-maker from San Francisco who worked with Sydney Peterson and Stan Brakhage. His short movies are not marked by heavy pretentions or formalism but only experimental film-poetry, and romance)
Within the structure of experimental film there lies no set structure.
Even: As You and I
Hilarious short spoof on Surrealism about a group of amateur film-makers that want to enter a film competition and after much head-scratching, try to make a surreal piece. Film-making humor, plus the actual short ('Afternoon of a Rubberband') containing random weirdness for its own sake and a funny spoof on Richter and Un Chien Andalou.
Part 1
Metropolis
Fritz Lang's masterpiece of expressionistic sci-fi visually pioneered the way for most futuristic movies like Blade Runner and Brazil. This world is separated into thinkers, who live comfortably on the top-side megapolis which they designed, and the workers, who live in a dark underground city and run the massive machinery under intensive labor. Both have no clue how the other world runs, the workers growing increasingly agitated, but inspired by an underground preacher, Maria, and awaiting the coming of the Heart, a mediator between both worlds. Joh plots to replace Maria with a robot while his son visits the underworld, in shock of what he sees. This movie doesn't just use melodramatic expressionism, it encapsulates it in its bigger, overwhelming, dark imagery of the cities, catacombs, and masses of people, and backs it all with grand, dramatic, symphonic music. Mixed with the science-fiction are some surreal dreams involving a huge machine turning into a man-eating Moloch, and statues of the seven sins and death coming alive cut together with an astounding sequence of an erotic dance of a robotic woman contorting and gyrating her body to a mass of hungry, insane eyeballs. Unforgettable classic that needs to be seen once by everyone despite its 'silly' and melodramatic approach, not only because it's a pioneer, but because it's still a unique, magical and astonishing experience today. Scenes are still missing, but the restored version has both the grander music, and inter titles that fill in the missing plot elements.
There It Is
The works of Buster Keaton and the forgotten Charles Bowers frequently throw logic out the window in favor of inventive and striking sight gags. But this short by Bowers takes this approach to an extreme of madcap and strange insanity. A strange Fuzz-Faced Phantom is haunting the Frisbie home, causing pants to dance, objects to disappear, floating through their living room and energetically setting up one strange occurrence after another that usually involves a mixture of practical joke, surprising inventiveness and scare. They call Scotland Yard for help (an actual yard with Scots) who sends Bowers and his weird bug-in-a-matchbox assistant to do battle with the bearded apparition. Endless inventiveness.
Here is a list of notable experimental filmmakers you might want to research, Ive included some of their films below.
Hans Richter (was a member of the Dada movement and practically the first avant-garde and abstract film-maker in the beginning of the 1920s),
br />
Luis Bunuel (the classic surrealist and a father of the movement),
Jean Cocteau (a classic surrealist. Cocteau was a multi-talented gay artist who tried his hand at writing, poetry, filming, painting and music)
Maya Deren (early, interesting, experimental film-maker of short silent films that make use of heavy psychological symbolism to explore themes of identity and society)
Sidney Peterson (what makes Peterson unusual is his use of surrealism and free associative sight gags and strange imagery in addition to the dull technical staples of experimental cinematography),
Stan Brakhage (one of the most notable and well-known experimental movie-makers who made almost 400 films in 50 years, most of them shorts ranging from a length of seconds to minutes)
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James Broughton (A playful, joyous, bisexual poet and experimental film-maker from San Francisco who worked with Sydney Peterson and Stan Brakhage. His short movies are not marked by heavy pretentions or formalism but only experimental film-poetry, and romance)
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