Film and the Avant-Garde

(cross-listed w/FMS 179) The role of film within avant-garde art, primarily in Europe and North America. Artists who made avant-garde films FILMS from the 1920s such as Fernand Leger and Marcel Duchamp, as well as filmmakers belonging to cross-media movements such as Dada and Surrealism. Post-war artists in the United States updating prewar avant-garde film genres while pioneering new ones, like the lyrical film and the collage film. Considers Structural film of the 1960s and the pluralism of avant-garde film since the 1970s. The proliferation of moving image installations in art galleries and museums. Attention to the historical conditions that gave rise to these developments, the theories behind them, and the use of avant-garde film by feminists and others for socio-political critique.