Meshes of the Afternoon is a 1943 American experimental silent short film directed by and starring wife-and-husband team, Maya Deren and Alexandr Hackenschmied.
Un Chien Andalou is a 1929 French silent short film directed, produced and edited by Luis Buñuel, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Salvador Dalí. Buñuel's first film, it was initially released in a limited capacity at Studio des Ursulines in Paris, but became popular and ran for eight months.
Maya Deren was a Ukrainian-born American experimental filmmaker and important part of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer, and photographer.
An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre or financing.
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that does not apply standard cinematic conventions, instead adopting non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources.
Sophie Luise Elisabeth Muller is an English music video director who has directed over 300 music videos. She won a Grammy Award for Annie Lennox's 1992 Diva video album, and an MTV Video Music Award for Lennox's song "Why" from the same album. In 1993, she received a BRIT Award for "Stay" by Shakespears Sister. She won another MTV Award in 1997 for "Don't Speak" by No Doubt. Muller is a longtime collaborator of Sade, Annie Lennox, Gwen Stefani, Kylie Minogue, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Garbage and Shakespears Sister.
The Family Stone is a 2005 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Thomas Bezucha. Produced by Michael London and distributed by 20th Century Fox, it stars an ensemble cast, including Diane Keaton, Craig T. Nelson, Dermot Mulroney, Sarah Jessica Parker, Luke Wilson, Claire Danes, Rachel McAdams, and Tyrone Giordano.
Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema. The film archive and theater is located at 32 Second Avenue on the southeast corner of East 2nd Street, in a New York City historic district in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan.
Alexandr Hackenschmied, born Alexander Siegfried George Hackenschmied, known later as Alexander Hammid, was a Czech-American photographer, film director, cinematographer and film editor. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1938 and became involved in American avant-garde cinema. He is best known for three films: Crisis (1939), Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) and To Be Alive! (1964). He made Meshes of the Afternoon with Maya Deren, to whom he was married from 1942 to 1947. His second marriage was to the photographer Hella Heyman, who had also collaborated with Hammid and Deren on several films.
The Wicker Man is a 2006 horror film written and directed by Neil LaBute and starring Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Beahan, Frances Conroy, Molly Parker, Leelee Sobieski and Diane Delano. It is a remake and reimagining of the 1973 British film The Wicker Man, but also draws from its source material, David Pinner's 1967 novel Ritual. The film concerns police officer Edward Malus, whose ex-fiancée Willow Woodward informs him that her daughter Rowan has disappeared and asks for his help in her search. When he arrives at the island in the Pacific Northwest where Rowan was last seen, he suspects something sinister about the neo-pagans who live there. The film received negative reviews and grossed $38.8 million.
Poetry film is a subgenre of film that fuses the use of spoken word poetry, visual images, and sound. This fusion of image and spoken word creates what William Wees called the "Poetry-film" genre. He suggested that "a number of avant-garde film and video makers have created a synthesis of poetry and film that generates associations, connotations and metaphors neither the verbal nor the visual text would produce on its own". Wees helpfully in his essay ‘Poetry-films and Film Poems’ references ‘poetry-film’ together with the ‘film poem’, as contrasting forms. 'Poetry-films’ contain a whole, or elements of a written or spoken poem, while ‘film poems’ are themselves the ‘poem’. Examples that Wees references include the ‘poetry-film’ ‘L'Étoile de mer’ (1928) by Man Ray which incorporates fragments of a poem by Robert Desnos, and the ‘film poem’ ‘Meshes of the Afternoon’ (1943) by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid which does not use and is not based on a poem, but in its structure, its edited images has what Wees calls visual ‘rhyming’ and ‘makes the film a particularly powerful example of film poetry’.
Kummatty is a 1979 Malayalam film written and directed by G. Aravindan. Ramunni, Master Ashok and Vilasini Reema were cast in the film.
Robert Carlton Breer was an American experimental filmmaker, painter, and sculptor.
The Private Life of a Cat is a 1947 black and white experimental documentary film by Alexander Hammid and Maya Deren. Archive.org summarizes the film as an "intimate study" of a female cat who gives birth to a litter of kittens and shows their maturation.
Rita Christiani (1917-2008) was a Trinidad-born American dancer who appeared in American films during the 1940s.
Ritual in Transfigured Time is a 1946 American experimental silent short film directed by Maya Deren. Like Deren's previous work, A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), she explores the use of dance on film through the lens of commentary of societal norms, metamorphosis, and anthropomorphism. The film is notable for its disjointed storytelling and use of slow motion, freeze framing, and unique blend of stage dance and film.
Hella Hammid was an American photographer whose career included teaching at UCLA. Her freelance photographs appeared in diverse publications including Life, Ebony, The Sun and The New York Times. Her softly backlit picture of two young Italian girls dancing, watched by other children in front of the abutments of a stone building, was chosen by Edward Steichen for his 1955 world-touring MoMA exhibition The Family of Man, which was seen by nine million visitors.
The Way to Shadow Garden is a 1955 American experimental film directed by Stan Brakhage.
Blue Moses is a 1962 American experimental film directed by Stan Brakhage, starring Robert Benson.
