Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

Treasures IV – American Avant-Garde Film,
1947-1986
Paolo Cherchi Usai
DVDs
Traditionnellement projeté en des
lieux dits non-commerciaux, le cinéma
expérimental a été victime de la
domination bien connue du cinéma de
fiction et de sa séance de deux heures.
Mais ce cinéma, qu’on disait marginal,
fait désormais partie de l’histoire et les
films d’avant-garde sont projetés dans
les festivals, les musées et les symposia,
souvent sous forme de compilations (90
minutes de Hollis Frampton, 2 heures
de surréalisme français, etc.), dans un
contexte bien éloigné de celui d’origine
des œuvres en question.
Les responsables du 4 e volume du
National Film Preservation Foundation
ont à l’évidence été très conscients
de ce défi : loin d’eux la prétention de
nous présenter une histoire syncrétique
du cinéma d’avant-garde américain
(contrairement à la collection Unseen
Cinema parue en 2005); ici le plaisir de
découvrir l’emporte sur l’exhaustivité.
Ainsi plusieurs cinéastes de premier
plan ne sont pas nécessairement
représentés par leurs films les plus
célèbres et il n’y a pas d’ordre strict
(genres, styles, etc.) dans la présentation
des films.
Un autre aspect important de cette
édition est la qualité des textes
de présentation – qui s’adressent
autant au spécialiste qu’au cinéphile
curieux - et leur rapport à chaque film
individuellement. Quel bonheur de lire
ces notes (biographiques, historiques,
esthétiques), puis de plonger dans le
film!
Les 26 films composant le coffret
témoignent du travail de cinq archives
du film : l’Anthology Film Archive,
collection majeure pour le cinéma
expérimental aux Etats-Unis, l’Academy
Film Archive, le Museum of Modern Art,
le Pacific Film Archive et le New York
Public Library’s Donnell Media Center.
Enfin la musique d’accompagnement
de John Zorn est en tous points
remarquable, dans sa subtilité autant
que dans sa diversité.
One of the great tragedies of experimental cinema – aside from its inherent
fragility as a cultural and material entity – is the fact that it has existed
in a world dominated by feature-length film exhibition practice, with a
two-hour slot focused upon a single main attraction. True, avant-garde
films have mostly been screened in non-commercial venues; their proud
marginality from the mainstream circuit is dependent, among other
things, upon an a priori rejection of the conventional modes of public
presentation. But now that the experiments have become history, they
tend to be displayed in a context (festivals, museums, conferences) that is
profoundly alien from their original purpose as individual, discrete entities.
In programming terms, this means that avant-garde cinema is often shown
in the form of compilations: 90 minutes of Hollis Frampton, two hours of
French surrealism, an evening with the Structuralists, and so on.
However, these films were rarely meant to be seen as part of anthologies
or systematic surveys: you would see Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart (1936)
and then do something else, perhaps listen to a poem or to a music
performance. By all accounts, a 120-minute presentation of Stan Brakhage
films is a sheer torture for the audience, and an insult to the filmmaker. A
similar kind of risk is implicit in the presentation of shorts in a DVD set,
not only due to the natural tendency to play them all at once, but also
because of the very nature of the package, necessarily geared towards
completeness and subject to the predictable logic of chronological order.
This premise is necessary to understand the significance of the fourth
installment in the National Film Preservation Foundation’s landmark series
on American cinema. Taken at face value, this elegantly designed 2-disc
sampler does not even attempt to provide a concise history of avant-garde
filmmaking in the United States, a far cry from Image Entertainment’s
massive collection Unseen Cinema (2005). An impressive number of major
artists are included in Treasures IV, but not necessarily through their major
works; even the styles and tendencies represented by the 26 titles selected
for the occasion are not arranged in a strict order, and they do not cover
the entire spectrum of experimental cinema in America in the mid-20th
century. The point is that this seemingly idiosyncratic approach is a blessing
in disguise, as the authors of the project – working under the guidance of
NFPF’s Jeff Lambert, a longtime expert in the field – have achieved what
a good film programmer should always aim at: an exciting roadmap for
intellectual discovery, rather than a complete but unsurprising chart.
An eloquent proof of this is the relationship between the individual films
reproduced on DVD and the corresponding program notes. Each title is
treated on its own terms, as a distinctive mirror of its era, thus requiring
proper explanation at all levels – archival, historical, aesthetic, biographical.
One of the most precious rewards of Treasures IV comes from the gradual
process involved in reading an introductory text, getting to know the artist
77 Journal of Film Preservation / 81 / 2009