Between Two Cinemas: American Avant-Garde. Part 1

This two-part autobiographical collage includes Lipman's restored experimental films of the past years and, as a result, features an experience of a kind of self-archiving. At the same time, it contains many references to films that influenced his creative style, and unique archival material, which tells, for instance, about the quarrel between Brakhage and Tarkovsky. This year we have decided to focus only on one of the poles designated by Lipman — the North American one: each part of his digital video essay will be preceded by a short retrospective of Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Michael Snow and Bruce Baillie's classic films on 16 mm. But the binary logic of the programme, thus, will be reflected in another dimension — the technological one: in the space between digital and analogue cinema.

Each film of the retrospective is somehow connected to the Ross Lipman's introspection. He talks in the first part of his autobiography about his acquaintance with the history of experimental cinema, and how the European avant-garde of the 20s was revived in post-war America. He talks about the influence of Maya Deren, whose film Meshes of the Afternoon marked the beginning of the original genre of psychodrama, or trance-film. Stan Brakhage's early films, such as The Way to Shadow Garden, were created in the same style. It is characterised by the attempts of the authorial reflection through the use of mythical themes and images; as well as the positioning of the author's figure into the centre of the elliptical narrative. Other distinctive features of many American avant-garde films that had an impact on Lipman were extreme intimacy in relation to the subject matter, naturalism, and challenging social and cultural taboos. An example of such a movie is Brakhage's Window Water Baby Moving, depicting the birth of the director's first child. Nevertheless, it was the form of the film with which avant-garde filmmakers conducted their most significant experiments, sometimes forgoing the sound or even the shooting process itself, as in the case of Mothlight.

Meshes of the Afternoon's dream-like mise-en-scne, illogical narrative trajectory, fluid movement and ambient soundtrack invite a type of contemplative, perhaps even transcendental, involvement for the spectator. The film is constructed from a myriad of eyeline matches and mismatches. The use of extreme angles to imply one character looking down on the dreamer, a type of spider's point of view, foreshadows the dreamer's death.

«Experimental sound by Brakhage. Blinding himself, a young man escapes his frightening room to enter the even more terrifying beauty of shadow garden. '… creates a tormented claustrophobic world… this wild study of a tortured youth has astonishing moments of brilliance.» – Film No 12.

«Brakhage's treatment of the birth of his daughter. Here he unleashes the full power of his technique, so apt to become abstractly unintelligible when left to his own devices, on a specific subject. The result is a picture so forthright, so full of primitive wonder and love, so far beyond civilisation in its acceptance that it becomes an experience like few in the history of the movies.» – Archer Winston, NY Post.

"Brakhage made Mothlight without a camera. He just pasted mothwings and flowers on a clear strip of film and ran it through the printing machine." – Jonas Mekas.