29 / BD 228 Kwaidan

[Michael Kerpan]

Hani and Teshigahara (and to a lesser extent, Shinoda and Imamura) seem a whole lot closer to avant-garde than Kobayashi -- and yet these directors present no problem for me (at least in general, there are some specific films I'm less than wild about -- such as Hani's Nanami).

[denti alligator]

Impressionism of course being the founding core identity of the avant garde.

Now I'm unsure what you mean by "avant garde." Can you explain this remark.

[HerrSchreck]

Weirdness amok..

(deleted )

I really don't understand what you don't understand about Impressionism being the core of the avant garde. You know, the way Kirsanoff, Epstein, L'Herbier, Gance, et al were (interchangably called Impressionists, who inspired the soviet avant garde) the founders of the cinematic Avant Garde... hugely feeding the American avant movement with it's founding film grammar.

[Tommaso]

Well, it's difficult if not impossible to speak of THE avantgarde, both in film and in other arts. There's an incredible difference between Stockhausen, Nono and Cage, yet all are seen as perhaps the leading figures in avantgarde music in the 20th century. Same for film: a quick look at the contents of the two Kino avantgarde sets makes it clear that some of them come from an impressionist background (Kirsanoff and Epstein being of course the obvious choices), but many others (Richter, Metzner, Dulac, Isou) follow very different threads but are of course avantgarde as well. The term is misleading I think if it is used to denote a style; it might be helpful if it is used to descibe an attitude of radically pushing the borders of art. In this broad sense "Kwaidan" can be considered 'avantgarde', though it is at odds with what was going on in the 'Japanese avantgarde' (read: new wave) at the time.

[HerrSchreck]

I don't agree entirely on either count, though I see what you're getting at-- the new wave (which really only = in the 60's a bunch of young turks going their own way.. no one would claim New Wave = Impressionism) doesnt per se equal the formal aspects of the avant garde film movement, which references something very definitite.

In terms of the Kino set (or the Unseen Cinema set, another box with took even more criticism for it's loose and silly use of the term), we can note a whole hodgepodge of "boundary pushing" or "imaginative" works which include surrealism, french & soviet impressionism, dada, and expressionism... but this is for marketing purposes. Both companies (Kino as well as Anthology during the semester of it's projection/exhibition-symposium on the subject, as well as it's dvd) took hits from the adademic world for, essentially, bad scholarship. Look at the Unseen Cinema stuff... the vast bulk of this (wonderful) set has nothing to do with the avant garde. Advisedly, do not mix Avant Garde as used for sales and marketing of dvd's in the 21st Century as your guide to tracing the bones of a very specific film movement in a way yonder age. Man Ray, Dulac, etc, woulda walked away from you if you pronounced them avant garde filmmakers. They were dada-ist/surrealists, who adhered to their own set of completely seperate ideas vis the avant garde. The same way we Tom know that M is not an Expressionist film, or Dreigroschenoper... that noir is not Expressionist, etc, we know that Dulac and Bunuel are most emphatically not avant garde.

But this is a common issue when a noun becomes an adjective... or in terms of ag an adjective becomes a noun... while continuing to be used as an adjective by those looking to simply to describe "new, strange".

But I'm talking in the strict adacemic sense. As in Expressionism, Surrealism, Poetic Realism, Neorealism, New Wave, etc. Each connotes a specific time and film movement. As does the French Impressionists aka Avant Garde... ie -----> L'Herbier, Gance, Feyder, Bernard, Epstein, Kirsanoff, early Gremillon. Hell even early silent Renoir flirted with it, particularly in The Little Match Girl.

If you told Bunuel in the early 30's that he was an avant garde filmmaker, he'd probably hurl on you, and tell you to get with it. Back then that referenced a very definite (Impressionist) school (from which Bunuel et al radically disagreed with on many fronts), which fed straight into the american avant garde movement. This is all pretty cut & dried stuff guys.

But yes it can be a "descriptive" (as in merely 'radical' or 'new'), but that's like throwing the word expressionism around every time a shadow in a film appears... and we know better right

[denti alligator]

These terms are frustratingly promiscuous.

I understand the term avant garde in strictly historical-aesthetic terms a la Peter Bürger, which means those pre-1917 artistic movements that militated against the decadent aestheticism of what Bürger calls the "institution of art," which includes the Impressionists (the painters). The historical Avantgarde is thus Dada, Futurism, Surrealism, and to a certain extent Expressionism. (Now when we talk Expressionist film we are talking about a belated Expressionism that hitherto had only existed in drama, painting, poetry, and isn't strictly speaking (big E) Expressionist at all---but that's another matter altogether.)

To call L'Herbier, Epstein, et al avant garde from Bürger's perspective would be flat-out wrong. The avant garde in film would be Entr'acte or Hans Richter or Duchamp or, yes, early Bunuel.

What confused me about your statement, Schreck, is that I hadn't thought of these filmmakers as employing (big I) Impressionist techniques. It seems the association stems from Bordwell, and--looking only briefly into the debate--is far from being accepted.

[HerrSchreck]

Dent, this would really be hijacking this thread to high heaven. The definition of "avant garde" is not the means to "identify the French Impressionist Avant Garde Movement". I think hence lieth the problem.

But yes, Bordwell utilized the term in strictly cinematic terms-- Burger's thesis if I recollect is concerned primarily with movements in literature and music for the greater picture... problematic in this case imho.

I'm concerned primarily with what the filmmakers considered themselves-- Bunuel most certainly did NOT consider himself a part of the Impressionist Avant Garde. He came up apprenticing with Jean Epstein, a father of the Impressionist Avant Garde, and Bunuel broke with his mentor over differences in ideas and application. One need only look at the wonderful absurdity of the early Bunuel you cite, the lack of a meticulous (or poetical, or painterly) visual style-- the rampant humor, the desire to shock/amuse/puncture and depart from any sense 0f cinematic tradition whatsoever (which Impressionism maintained through typically extreme sincerity of emotion)-- and see immediately the yawning gap that seperated the Surrealists from the Impressionists. Dali- Bunuel wouldn't be caught dead engaging in the soft melancholia, and sincere moaning and groaning viz the pain of life so present in the work of Impressionists.

If that's what Burger believes then I believe he's hugely mistaken. Just put into any engine French Impressionist Avant Garde. I hate citing wiki on anything, but it was my first search result and all seems basically in order:

French Impressionist Cinema, also referred to as The First Avant-Garde or Narrative Avant-Garde, is a term applied to a loose and debatable group of films and filmmakers in France from 1919-1929 (though these years are also debatable).

Needless to say the stylistic variety of these very unique filmmakers within the movement is broad-- as in any "movement", but their bluesy, melancholic, heavily atmospheric, (generally, at least vs the Surrealists) emotionally sincere, laden with the mists and fog of autumn, sundowns, cloudy days, senses of sadness and depression, rampant use of superimposiitions and moody, heavily evocative cinematography, dreamlike atmosphere, extremely poetic symbol orders, etc, great innovations in montage and fractured narrative tie them together enough together for attribution.

If you don't buy the scholarship, you don't buy it. That's fine. You're entitled any opinion you'd like. But I'd encourage to to reexamine the films you have seen, acquire those you haven't (as they can be difficult to get a hold of), consider the threads that tie these filmmakers together, and consider other similarities that may exist between these and others which are less significant.

Anyhow-- and the point was-- I see traces of both Impressionist and Expressionist influence in Kwaidan.

[denti alligator]

Dent, this would really be hijacking this thread to high heaven.

That's fine with me. Let's let the mods deal with that.

Burger's thesis if I recollect is concerned primarily with movements in literature and music for the greater picture... problematic in this case imho.

No, primarily plastic arts and painting, with literature also prominent. I don't recall if film is ever mentioned. I agree it becomes problematic, and I certaintly don't swallow his thesis hook-line n' all--but it's a powerful argument, and one of the most prominent theorizations of the avant garde.

I'm concerned primarily with what the filmmakers considered themselves-- Bunuel most certainly did NOT consider himself a part of the Impressionist Avant Garde.

I think that's a wise approach, and it's too bad that theorists too often ignore how the artists themselves perceived themselves. Bunuel considered himself a Surrealist, and by Buerger's argument, he would be an avant gardist. Epstein most certainly did not consider himself a part of the "Impressionist Avant Garde," either, since it was Bordwell who invented that term (haven't read the Bordwell recently, so maybe I'm wrong here, but that was my impression: this was Bordwell's categorization).

If that's what Burger believes then I believe he's hugely mistaken.

From Bordwell's perspective maybe, but even there I'm not so sure Bordwell would disagree with Buerger--it's just that they're employing similar terminology to say different things. And that's why I find Bordwell's terminology so frustrating. He knows Buerger's book. So why adopt a term to mean the opposite of what a prominent theorist has defined it to mean?

Anyway, we're not disagreeing on what these filmmakers are doing. Obviously Bunuel's early work is in another realm from Epstein. How we propose to disignate these is another issue.

[zedz]

If that's what Burger believes then I believe he's hugely mistaken. Just put into any engine French Impressionist Avant Garde. I hate citing wiki on anything, but it was my first search result and all seems basically in order:

French Impressionist Cinema, also referred to as The First Avant-Garde or Narrative Avant-Garde, is a term applied to a loose and debatable group of films and filmmakers in France from 1919-1929 (though these years are also debatable).

Needless to say the stylistic variety of these very unique filmmakers within the movement is broad-- as in any "movement", but their bluesy, melancholic, heavily atmospheric, (generally, at least vs the Surrealists) emotionally sincere, laden with the mists and fog of autumn, sundowns, cloudy days, senses of sadness and depression, rampant use of superimposiitions and moody, heavily evocative cinematography, dreamlike atmosphere, extremely poetic symbol orders, etc, great innovations in montage and fractured narrative tie them together enough together for attribution.

If you don't buy the scholarship, you don't buy it. That's fine. You're entitled any opinion you'd like. But I'd encourage to to reexamine the films you have seen, acquire those you haven't (as they can be difficult to get a hold of), consider the threads that tie these filmmakers together, and consider other similarities that may exist between these and others which are less significant.

Further to Schreck's post, I believe that Impressionism was not a post-facto critical label, but was the label chosen by this group to describe themselves (coined by Epstein, I think). (Hence Bunuel's rejection of the label was more about him not belonging to that particular club rather than noting a stylistic difference - though his work of the period was in quite a different vein, see below.)

The term wasn't particularly based on any perceived surface similarity to fine art Impressionism (we shoot things out of focus!), but was chosen to express their intention to embody subjective states of mind cinematically. Hence the common denominators of in-camera effects (dissolves, superimpositions), wild camera movement and advanced editing techniques, as opposed to Expressionism's emphasis on transforming the physical environment that was filmed (set design, makeup, performance, costume).

[HerrSchreck]

I was waiting for you to catch this thread!

[denti alligator]

Further to Schreck's post, I believe that Impressionism was not a post-facto critical label, but was the label chosen by this group to describe themselves (coined by Epstein, I think). (Hence Bunuel's rejection of the label was more about him not belonging to that particular club rather than noting a stylistic difference - though his work of the period was in quite a different vein, see below.)

In that case Bordwell's terminology makes more sense. If Epstein et al used the term "avant garde" to describe themselves, I would be curious to know what they meant by it.

[HerrSchreck]

I'm concerned primarily with what the filmmakers considered themselves-- Bunuel most certainly did NOT consider himself a part of the Impressionist Avant Garde. He came up apprenticing with Jean Epstein, a father of the Impressionist Avant Garde,

[denti alligator]

Would the Surrealists really not have thought of themselves as part of an avant garde (as we understand them today)?

Did the "cinematic avant garde" in the 1920s refer specifically and only to the 'Epstein school'?

These are genuine questions: I'm trying to get my bearings on these terms, since I'm really only familiar with the German tradition and its subsequent theorization: Buerger. (I wish I had my Calinescu on hand to see what he has to say.) Hence my confusion about aligning impressionism with avant garde in the first place.

[zedz]

Take all this skeptically - it's been a while since I've read a lot of the stuff around this. I think 'avant garde' as it applies to 20s cinema is a broader (and later) terminology, but it's fairly strongly aligned with what came under the Impressionist umbrella. The 'Soviet Avant-garde', for instance, was co-opted by the French Impressionists because of its similarity in terms of montage techniques. And German Expressionism (and other forward-looking narrative filmmaking) was generally NOT included under the avant-garde label (Expressionism being its own, often sloppily defined, thing). But AG also included various experimental / fine art examples (Ruttman, Leger, Fischinger etc.) and the surrealists.

[denti alligator]

To partly answer my own question and back-up Schreck's statements:

Buñuel later said, "Historically the film [Un chien andalou] represents a violent reaction against what in those days was called 'avant-garde,' which was aimed exclusively at artistic sensibility and the audience's reason."

This would of course fly in the face of Buerger's notion of the historical avant garde, which employed exactly those "violent" techniques as an attack on "reason," but with an aimto reintegrate art and life, essentially to sublate art into life, not to uphold its strict division a la the aestheticists.

I just always figured the application of avant garde to film was fuzzy, like the way the term is commonly used today to refer to experimentation. Can some of you recommend some reading where I can trace the development of this concept of the cinematic avant garde in the 1920s, as it was understood then.

[skeets kelly]

does anyone know where i can get a replacement case for Kwaidan? i just got one in the mail and the case was totally destroyed but it's a weird size...

it's like a double disc case, but it's for a single disc and most of the room is for the booklet. if anyone has any idea where i can get one, i'd greatly appreciate it. the problem is, of course, that i only need one.

[swo17]

does anyone know where i can get a replacement case for Kwaidan? i just got one in the mail and the case was totally destroyed but it's a weird size...

it's like a double disc case, but it's for a single disc and most of the room is for the booklet. if anyone has any idea where i can get one, i'd greatly appreciate it. the problem is, of course, that i only need one.

I'm not sure if I understand what you're describing, but you might try looking here.

[skeets kelly]

does anyone know where i can get a replacement case for Kwaidan? i just got one in the mail and the case was totally destroyed but it's a weird size...

it's like a double disc case, but it's for a single disc and most of the room is for the booklet. if anyone has any idea where i can get one, i'd greatly appreciate it. the problem is, of course, that i only need one.

I'm not sure if I understand what you're describing, but you might try looking here.

mmm, there's one that's close but they sell in packs of 10.

yeah, it's kind of weird. it's like a double disc case if the discs were on the left and the right, but there's only one disc and the booklet side is double deep to accomodate the book. i'd get a regular case, but the outer sleeve spine is double-wide, too.

[kinjitsu]

That package was made specifically to accommodate the oversized booklet, so you want to email peerpee directly for a replacement.

[skeets kelly]

That package was made specifically to accommodate the oversized booklet, so you want to email peerpee directly for a replacement.

yeah, i just did that!

[der_Artur]

The case used should be a Scanavo 22mm case. At least mine is.
These things are expensive and rather hard to get, I could replace my broken case only when the DVD-Label I did my internship for received some sample-cases from Scanavo.

[skeets kelly]

eureka said they would replace the case.

so, hooray for eureka. very nice of them!

[Matango]

They replaced mine too, when it arrived broken from Amazon a couple of years ago. Just an aside, but I noticed that the similarly packaged MoC Nosferatu has gone from double-thick to single/normal case now. Maybe they've realised that those thick booklets can actualy squeeze into a single case, and since the Kwaidan booklet contains eight pages less than the Nosferatu, it'll also be made available in that packaging (if it isn't already).

[jamie_summers]

it is indeed already available in a normal sized case

[James]

Just curious: Does the actual DVD cover have the Cannes Jury Prize Winner Award emblem on it?