Experimental/deviant short film top 50
A highly personal top 50 of experimental and atypical short films.
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- DirectorFrans ZwartjesStarsFrans ZwartjesTrix ZwartjesThe director and his wife move restlessly through a largely empty apartment.Impressive and uneasy 'huis clos' with an incredible organ score. In-camera editing and mindblowing hand held camerawork by the Dutch filmmaker Frans Zwartjes. Susan Sontag mentioned him as "the most important experimental filmmaker of his time", an oft quoted dictum.
- DirectorChris MarkerStarsÉtienne BeckerJean NégroniHélène ChatelainThe story of a man forced to explore his memories in the wake of World War III's devastation, told through still images.Chris Marker's ourobouros, entirely made of photographic still images. One of the most influental films ever. A meditation on memory, death and the medium.
- DirectorAlain ResnaisStarsMichel BouquetReinhard HeydrichHeinrich HimmlerThe history of Nazi Germany's death camps of the Final Solution and the hellish world of dehumanization and death contained inside.One of the most important documents of our time, revealing the horrors of the concentration camps. Alain Resnais mixed color and black&white as a strategy to show that the past is still in the present.
- DirectorLuis BuñuelStarsPierre BatcheffSimone MareuilLuis BuñuelLuis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí present 16 minutes of bizarre, surreal imagery.The image of a knife splitting an eyeball is well known and metaphorically representative for this entire Surrealist film by Luis Buñuel.
- DirectorGeorges FranjuStarsGeorges HubertNicole LadmiralAlfred MacquartBucolic scenes from the outskirts of Paris are contrasted with stark footage from slaughterhouses.Blood drenched documentary in black & white about a slaughterhouse in the suburbs of Paris. Georges Franju's raw vérité style is supported by a shockingly neutral voice over, meditating on animal cruelty as part of everyday's working life.
- DirectorGermaine DulacStarsAlex AllinLucien BatailleGenica AthanasiouObsessed with a general's woman, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.Antonin Artaud who wrote the screenplay was not pleased with the work done by female director Germaine Dulac. Superimpositions, splitted images and other Surrealist devices are blended in this stunning avant-garde masterpiece.
- DirectorKenneth AngerStarsErnie AlloBruce ByronFrank CarifiA gang of Nazi bikers prepares for a race as sexual, sadistic, and occult images are cut together.King of cult and occultism Kenneth Anger mixed fetisjist imagery of bikes and beautiful boys with a messy pop soundtrack. Shiny vehicles and studded leather jackets used in queer cinema until today keep referring to this perverse example of underground cinema. It makes us smile.
- DirectorMaya DerenAlexander HammidStarsMaya DerenAlexander HammidA woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space, her dark inner desires play out on-screen.Maya Deren is one of the most important female directors in non-narrative cinema. The iconography of mirrors, keys and unidentified doubles most likely inspired David Lynch. A sensitive and repetitive meditation on identity and the subconscious.
- DirectorJean CocteauStarsEnrique RiveroElizabeth Lee MillerPauline CartonTold in four episodes - an unnamed artist is transported through a mirror into another dimension, where he travels through various bizarre scenarios.Jean Cocteau's iconic and dreamlike experimental film is a poem in itself. One leaps into a mirror and enters a world in which statues come to life.
- DirectorJean GenetStarsBravoJean GenetJavaTwo prisoners in complete isolation, separated by the thick brick walls, and desperately in need of human contact, devise a most unusual kind of communication.Sensual film poem about prisoners taken captive in desire. A voyeuristic lyrical film in which the camera makes love with muscular male bodies in dreamy isolation. The one and only film by the convicted French author Jean Genet.
- DirectorStan BrakhageThe turn of the seasons in the forest is depicted in relation to a decomposing dog corpse.Stan Brakhage's trance film cuts up the transcience of life and death into thousand pieces. Many hours of filming compiled into a breath taking experimental film shows the desintegration of his dead dog's body, left in the woods. It all goes to dust, just like film in itself.
- DirectorMan RayStarsKiki of MontparnasseAndré de la RivièreRobert DesnosTwo people stand on a road, out of focus. Seen distorted through a glass, they retire upstairs to a bedroom where she undresses. He says, "Adieu." Images: the beautiful girl, a starfish in a jar, city scenes, newspapers, tugboats. More images: starfish, the girl. "How beautiful she is." Repeatedly. He advances up the stair, knife in hand, starfish on the step. Three people stand on a road, out of focus. "How beautiful she was." "How beautiful she is." "Beautiful."Photographer Man Ray, one of the leading figures in Surrealism, delivered a sensuous love story making use of anamorphes and spickled images by applying paraffine wax on the lenses. Impressionism at first sight but not quite yet.
- DirectorMichael SnowStarsHollis FramptonLyne GrossmanNaoto NakazawaClaimed by some to be one of the most unconventional and experimental films ever made, Wavelength is a structural film of a 45-minute long zoom in on a window over a period of a week. Very unconventional and experimental, indeed.Michael Snow, structuralist pur sang, goes looking for a particularly sensitive part of your brain and holds the camera just there where it hurts. Not much action except for the camera movement and what he needs is just a floor and a ceiling as setting for a mindblowing experiment in cinema.
- DirectorJoseph CornellStarsCharles BickfordRose HobartNoble JohnsonFootage selected from 'East of Borneo' and other films is arranged and edited so as to highlight actress Rose Hobart.Found footage film: here does it start, not quite historically speaking, but in terms of the evolution towards a true film subgenre. 'East of Borneo' cut-up by artist Joseph Cornell as a firm statement of experimental collage film.
- DirectorRené ClairStarsJean BörlinInge FrïssFrancis PicabiaAn absolute dada movie. Somebody gets killed, his coffin gets out of control and after a chase it stops. The person gets out of it and let everybody who followed the coffin dissapear.René Clair, Francis Picabia and Erik Satie are responsible for this avant-garde monument. Cinema is magic, a coffin opens, film becomes the box of Pandora, and then...disappears.
- DirectorFernand LégerDudley MurphyStarsKiki of MontparnasseFernand LégerDudley MurphyA pulsing, kaleidoscope of images set to an energetic soundtrack. A young women swings in a garden; a woman's face smiles. The rest is spinning cylinders, pistons, gears and turbines, kitchen objects in concentric circles or rows - pots, pan lids, and funnels, cars passing overhead, a spinning carnival ride. Over and over, a heavy-set woman climbs stairs carrying a large bag on her shoulder. An Art Deco cartoon figure appears, dancing. This is a world in motion, dominated by mechanical and repetitive images, with a few moments of solitude in a garden.Towards the abstract via cut-up figures...Cubism and Dadaism meet in this unavoidable work of art by Fernand Léger.
- DirectorAlexander HammidMaya DerenTwo cats have a litter of 5 kittens and then nurse, teach and play with them.Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid documented the birth of a nest of kittens in their home. Both a great experiment in the subgenre of home movies and a study of the world of animals. A microcosmical family film. Just adorable, and still it was on the black list of censorship for a while because the film revealed too much of the matters of procreation.
- DirectorYukio MishimaStarsYukio MishimaYoshiko TsuruokaA Noh dramatization of the suicides of Lt. Shinji Takeyama and his wife Reiko. After participating in a failed 1936 coup and being ordered to execute his friends, he bids his wife an intimate farewell and commits harakiri.The one and only film by the Japanese author Mishima, based on his short novel 'Patriotism'. An pretty accurate rehearsal of his own suicide by seppuku. Influences of the Japanese ritual theatre, horrifying close-ups of the violation of the body and lyrical worshipping of the act of making love as the endpoint of life. The Liebestod by Wagner adds some more pathos to the theme of Eros versus Thanatos.
- DirectorCharles DekeukeleireStarsYvonne SelmaAttempt towards futurism by the Belgian film maker Charles Dekeukeleire. A juxtaposition of images of a female motordriver who is sometimes dressed, sometimes naked. Inspired by Russian montage experiments, the director plays with the expectations of the viewer, focussing on movement and deconstruction.
- DirectorToshio MatsumotoTwo series of images, chaotically showcasing Japan in the '60s, showing images of student riots, ads and pop culture.Toshio Matsumoto is known for his feature length films as Shura and Funeral Parade of Roses. He also made some short films inspired by the American avant-garde cinema of the sixties. This outrageous film needs three projectors and has the same look and feel as the expanded experiment by Andy Warhol, 'The exploiding plastic inevitable'.
- DirectorHollis FramptonStarsMichael SnowFrampton slowly burning his black and white photographs as he describes and tells the story behind them.A statement on memory and the transcience of the image by Hollis Frampton, master of the structuralist movement.
- DirectorMartin ScorseseStarsPeter BernuthIn the process of shaving, a young man cuts himself. A lot.Close-ups of bathroom details, a young American start shaving in front of the mirror. Uplifting trumpet music. Good morning! Then he hits a sensitive spot...and some more. The boy doesn't stop before the shaving ritual starts looking like a suicide attempt. His ultimate cool doesn't seem to match with the sink and his face soaked in blood. A good way to start the day. Provoking short by Martin Scorsese.
- DirectorAleksandr SokurovStarsAleksandr SokurovFrom a misty night into the dark exposition rooms of a museum to ponder philosophically at paintings by 'Pieter Jansz Saenredam', 'Hercules Pieterszoon Seghers', Hendrikus van de Sande Bakhuyzen, Andreas Schelfhout, Vincent van Gogh, Pieter Bruegel, Charles Henri Joseph Leickert.The Russian cineast Alexander Sokurov aims to make 25 'elegies' or film poems. One of the most convincing shorts until now is 'Elegy of a Voyage'. A travelogue from Russia to Rotterdam ends in the museum Boymans Van Beuningen, where the mysterious dweller finds his soul back in a painting by Pieter Saenredam from the 17th century. The paint is still warm, he claims, while being haunted by the shadows of his past.
- DirectorRichard KernStarsLydia LunchEmilio CubeiroMarty NationFINGERED is an art film that's constructed like a regular movie. Lydia Lunch plays a phone sex operator/prostitute that gets together with a guy she's been on the phone with. After a semi-hardcore sex scene, the violence begins. The man cuts someone's throat for looking at Lydia's character, then they go for a drive. The two abduct a hitch hiker and rape her in a junkyard.The ultimate example of the Cinema of Transgression movement, born in the gutters of the unclean city of New York in the 70s and 80s. Photographer and evil cameraman Richard Kern made this statement of anti-cinema. A zero budget sex thriller with excellent no wave/industrial score in which singer Lydia Lunch plays a dirty talking punk victim.
- DirectorJean-Daniel PolletA short film documenting the seas and shores of the Mediterranean Sea."A modernist ruin of a road movie, though—one that seeks to travel in time rather than space and that, with proper dialectical balance, has antiquity as its impossible destination." (Chris Darke, in Film Comment)