Experimental/deviant short film top 50
by sofie-verdoodt | created - 14 Mar 2013 | updated - 24 Oct 2013 | PublicA highly personal top 50 of experimental and atypical short films.
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1. Living (1971)
15 min | Short
The director and his wife move restlessly through a largely empty apartment.
Director: Frans Zwartjes | Stars: Frans Zwartjes, Trix Zwartjes
Votes: 209
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.
2. La Jetée (1962)
Not Rated | 28 min | Short, Drama, Romance
The story of a man forced to explore his memories in the wake of World War III's devastation, told through still images.
Director: Chris Marker | Stars: Étienne Becker, Jean Négroni, Hélène Chatelain, Davos Hanich
Votes: 37,257
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.
3. Night and Fog (1956)
TV-14 | 32 min | Documentary, Short, History
The history of Nazi Germany's death camps of the Final Solution and the hellish world of dehumanization and death contained inside.
Director: Alain Resnais | Stars: Michel Bouquet, Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler
Votes: 21,541
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.
4. Un chien andalou (1929)
Not Rated | 16 min | Short, Fantasy, Horror
Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí present 16 minutes of bizarre, surreal imagery.
Director: Luis Buñuel | Stars: Pierre Batcheff, Simone Mareuil, Luis Buñuel, Pancho Cossío
Votes: 54,086
The image of a knife splitting an eyeball is well known and metaphorically representative for this entire Surrealist film by Luis Buñuel.
5. Blood of the Beasts (1949)
22 min | Documentary, Short
Bucolic scenes from the outskirts of Paris are contrasted with stark footage from slaughterhouses.
Director: Georges Franju | Stars: Georges Hubert, Nicole Ladmiral, Alfred Macquart, Maurice Griselle
Votes: 2,602
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.
6. The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928)
40 min | Short, Drama, Fantasy
Obsessed with a general's woman, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.
Director: Germaine Dulac | Stars: Alex Allin, Lucien Bataille, Genica Athanasiou
Votes: 2,296
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.
7. Scorpio Rising (1963)
28 min | Short, Music
A gang of Nazi bikers prepares for a race as sexual, sadistic, and occult images are cut together.
Director: Kenneth Anger | Stars: Ernie Allo, Bruce Byron, Frank Carifi, Steve Crandell
Votes: 5,724
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.
8. Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
Not Rated | 14 min | Short, Fantasy, Mystery
A 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.
Directors: Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid | Stars: Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid
Votes: 15,258
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.
9. The Blood of a Poet (1932)
Not Rated | 55 min | Fantasy
Told in four episodes - an unnamed artist is transported through a mirror into another dimension, where he travels through various bizarre scenarios.
Director: Jean Cocteau | Stars: Enrique Rivero, Elizabeth Lee Miller, Pauline Carton, Odette Talazac
Votes: 7,407
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.
10. Song of Love (1950)
Not Rated | 26 min | Short, Drama, Fantasy
Two prisoners in complete isolation, separated by the thick brick walls, and desperately in need of human contact, devise a most unusual kind of communication.
Director: Jean Genet | Stars: Bravo, Jean Genet, Java, Coco Le Martiniquais
Votes: 3,723
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.
11. Sirius Remembered (1959)
12 min | Short
The turn of the seasons in the forest is depicted in relation to a decomposing dog corpse.
Director: Stan Brakhage
Votes: 308
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.
12. L'étoile de mer (1928)
21 min | Short, Romance
Two 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 ... See full summary »
Director: Man Ray | Stars: Kiki of Montparnasse, André de la Rivière, Robert Desnos
Votes: 1,573
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.
13. Wavelength (1967)
Not Rated | 43 min | Short, Drama
Claimed 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.
Director: Michael Snow | Stars: Hollis Frampton, Lyne Grossman, Naoto Nakazawa, Roswell Rudd
Votes: 3,035
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.
14. Rose Hobart (1936)
Unrated | 19 min | Short
Footage selected from 'East of Borneo' and other films is arranged and edited so as to highlight actress Rose Hobart.
Director: Joseph Cornell | Stars: Charles Bickford, Rose Hobart, Noble Johnson, Georges Renavent
Votes: 1,009
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.
15. Entr'acte (1924)
22 min | Short
An 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.
Director: René Clair | Stars: Jean Börlin, Inge Frïss, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp
Votes: 4,226
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.
16. Ballet mécanique (1924)
19 min | Short
A 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, ... See full summary »
Directors: Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy | Stars: Kiki of Montparnasse, Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy, Katherine Murphy
Votes: 3,296
Towards the abstract via cut-up figures...Cubism and Dadaism meet in this unavoidable work of art by Fernand Léger.
17. The Private Life of a Cat (1946)
22 min | Documentary, Short
Two cats have a litter of 5 kittens and then nurse, teach and play with them.
Directors: Alexander Hammid, Maya Deren
Votes: 1,112
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.
18. Patriotism (1966)
Not Rated | 30 min | Drama, Short
A 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.
Director: Yukio Mishima | Stars: Yukio Mishima, Yoshiko Tsuruoka
Votes: 2,049
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.
19. Impatience (1928)
36 min | Short, Fantasy
Director: Charles Dekeukeleire | Star: Yvonne Selma
Votes: 111
Attempt 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.
20. Tsuburekakatta migime no tame ni (1968)
13 min | Short
Two series of images, chaotically showcasing Japan in the '60s, showing images of student riots, ads and pop culture.
Director: Toshio Matsumoto
Votes: 194
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'.
21. Hapax Legomena I: Nostalgia (1971)
36 min | Short
Frampton slowly burning his black and white photographs as he describes and tells the story behind them.
Director: Hollis Frampton | Star: Michael Snow
Votes: 729
A statement on memory and the transcience of the image by Hollis Frampton, master of the structuralist movement.
22. The Big Shave (1967)
Not Rated | 5 min | Short, Drama, Horror
In the process of shaving, a young man cuts himself. A lot.
Director: Martin Scorsese | Star: Peter Bernuth
Votes: 8,755
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.
23. Elegiya dorogi (2001)
48 min | Drama, Fantasy
From 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 ... See full summary »
Director: Aleksandr Sokurov | Star: Aleksandr Sokurov
Votes: 458
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.
24. Fingered (1988)
Unrated | 25 min | Short
FINGERED 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 ... See full summary »
Director: Richard Kern | Stars: Lydia Lunch, Emilio Cubeiro, Marty Nation, Michael Compton
Votes: 588
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.
25. Mediterranean (1963)
44 min | Documentary, Short
A short film documenting the seas and shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Director: Jean-Daniel Pollet
Votes: 888
"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)
26. Ai (1962)
10 min | Short
The act of making love seen through close-up and magnifying lens.
Director: Takahiko Iimura
Votes: 69
Takahiko Iimura's film poem is a study of the human body during lovemaking in extreme close-up. One is not sure what's to be seen and understand, but it is not easy to forget this lyrical film.
27. Kyanq (1993)
7 min | Short, Documentary
Poetic essay about the beginning of life from labor pains and birth and about its symbolic meaning.
Director: Artavazd Peleshian
Votes: 495
Stunning ode to life and birth by Artavazd Peleshian, the Armenian master of documentary. Symbolic images and Verdi's requiem.
All films by Bill Morrison are about 'the state of decay of cinema'. Not as good as his longer film Decasia, but nevertheless a haunting meditation on the frailty of life and images. The smell of burning pellicule!
29. La femme qui se poudre (1972)
18 min | Short, Fantasy, Horror
A study of human anxieties about beauty, youth and objectification.
Director: Patrick Bokanowski | Stars: Jean-Jacques Choul, Jacques Delbosc d'Auzon, Claus-Dieter Reents, Nadine Roussial
Votes: 383
Not as great as Patrick Bokanowski's feature length film 'L'Ange' but still a remarkable surrealist b&w short. Making use of typical avant-garde devices such as superimposition, he creates an eerie universe with a perfect soundtrack and gothic imagery.
30. Twice a Man (1963)
49 min | Drama
Paul Klib stars in this experimental film in which he is loved by his stepmother as well as another man (Albert Torgessen). He sees his stepmother as both a young woman ( Olympia Dukakis ) and an older one (Violet Roditi).
Director: Gregory J. Markopoulos | Stars: Olympia Dukakis, Paul Kilb, Gerard Malanga, Violet Roditi
Votes: 171
Gregory Markopoulos is one of the most overlooked film makers of the American avant-garde. Influenced by Greek mythology, his entire oeuvre is best described as mythopoetic, making use of lyrical images, dreamlike editing, literary influences and gay erotic theatricality. Twice a Man is one of his short masterpieces, dealing with the Mother as an archetype.
31. Razor Blades (1968)
25 min | Short
A split-screen film consisting of rapidly flashing colors, shapes, patterns, letters, words, and images.
Director: Paul Sharits
Votes: 92
Paul Sharits' structuralist works are a challenge for the mind and the eye. Razor Blades needs two screens and overwhelms the viewer with juxtaposed, multicoloured images of tremendous beauty. The stunning amount of visual stimuli is hard to take but this hypnotic piece is pretty unforgettable.
32. Film: A Screen Play by Samuel Beckett (1979)
26 min | Short, Drama
An exploration of the philosopher Berkeley's dictum that "to be is to be perceived", from Samuel Beckett's only screenplay, originally written for Buster Keaton.
Director: David Rayner Clark | Stars: Max Wall, Patricia Hayes, Richard Goolden, Monica Merlin
Votes: 34
Alan Schneider and Samuel Beckett made this rarely screened film as the only attempt of the Irish writer to work with the medium. Starring Buster Keaton, this short film is about visual perception. A curious absurdist film of rigid staging that deals with some anecdotical events and unnamed characters including a cat and "a shy and uncooperative, little chihuahua".
33. Lot in Sodom (1933)
Not Rated | 28 min | Short, Drama
Lot in Sodom is a sensual depiction of the Sodom and Gomorrah story filled with sinewy and semi-clad bodies, delirious bacchanales devoted to physical pleasure, and a searing, cataclysmic ... See full summary »
Directors: James Sibley Watson, Melville Webber | Stars: Friedrich Haak, Hildegarde Watson, Dorthea House, Lewis Whitbeck
Votes: 704
Watson & Webber's controversial biblical short on decadence that leads to punishment, full of gay erotic images that are pretty remarkable for 1933. Pure beauty.
34. At 3:25 (1925)
Unrated | 59 min | Sci-Fi
A scientist's invisible ray freezes Paris into immobility.
Director: René Clair | Stars: Charles Martinelli, Louis Pré Fils, Albert Préjean, Madeleine Rodrigue
Votes: 1,980
Avant-garde scifi fantasy in which René Clair freezes Paris.
35. In the Shadow of the Sun (1981)
51 min | Fantasy
A collection of Super 8 films shot by Derek Jarman between 1972 and 1975, edited to the music of Throbbing Gristle.
Director: Derek Jarman | Stars: Karl Bowen, Graham Dowie, Christopher Hobbs, Gerald Incandela
Votes: 291
Archetypal footage by Derek Jarman with a throbbing score by Throbbing Gristle.
36. Outer Space (1999)
Not Rated | 10 min | Short, Horror
Footage from The Entity (1982) is edited into an abstract nightmare.
Director: Peter Tscherkassky | Star: Barbara Hershey
Votes: 2,805
One of Austria's best but actually from another planet. By Peter Tscherkassky.
37. The Mad Masters (1955)
36 min | Documentary, Short, Horror
A documentary short depicting a Hauka ceremony where young workers are possessed by British colonial officers.
Director: Jean Rouch | Star: Jean Rouch
Votes: 1,780
Visual anthropology by Jean Rouch.
38. Brutality in Stone (1961)
12 min | Documentary, Short
In his experimental short film 'Brutalitaet in Stein' (Brutality in Stone), Alexander Kluge demonstrates how Nazi architecture used dimensions of inhuman and super-human scale to bolster ... See full summary »
Directors: Alexander Kluge, Peter Schamoni | Stars: Hans Clarin, Christian Marschall
Votes: 277
The perfect title for Alexander Kluge's documentary on nazi architecture. The stones are telling us unpleasant stories.
39. Pensão Globo (1999)
15 min | Short
A man faces his approaching death. He takes a journey, his last perhaps, and ends up at the Pensão Globo in Lisbon, where he sets out on an aimless excursion through the city. The film ... See full summary »
Director: Matthias Müller | Stars: Bavo Defurne, Heiko Dupke, Mike Hoolboom, Ariana Mirza
Votes: 44
Death in Lissabon by Matthias Müller.
40. Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998)
15 min | Short, Comedy
Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland perform a hellish courtship in a nightmare of the American dream, created by manipulating old film.
Director: Martin Arnold | Stars: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Grace Hayes, Charles Winninger
Votes: 545
Funny and irritating at the same time. A metadiscourse by Martin Arnold on the 'cinema of exclusion'.
41. Le Songe Des Chevaux Sauvages (1960)
11 min | Documentary, Short
Slow motion cinematography of the wild horses of the Camargue region of France.
Director: Denys Colomb de Daunant | Star: Jacques Prévert
Votes: 84
While dreaming of wild horses...
42. Ménilmontant (1926)
38 min | Short, Drama
A couple is brutally murdered in the working-class district of Paris. Later on, the narrative follows the lives of their two daughters, both in love with a Parisian thug and leading them to separate ways.
Director: Dimitri Kirsanoff | Stars: Nadia Sibirskaïa, Yolande Beaulieu, Guy Belmont, Jean Pasquier
Votes: 2,747
One of the highlights in avant-garde montage experiments. By Dimitri Kirsanoff.
43. Fuses (1967)
22 min | Short
An experimental short in which a couple engaged in lovemaking is superimposed over ocean and beach scenes.
Director: Carolee Schneemann | Stars: Carolee Schneemann, James Tenney
Votes: 408
Masterpiece of Eros with painted parts by Carolee Schneemann.
44. The Heart of the World (2000)
Not Rated | 6 min | Short, Action, Fantasy
A scientist chooses a wealthy man over her two lovers but must heal the earth's core to save humanity.
Director: Guy Maddin | Stars: Leslie Bais, Caelum Vatnsdal, Shaun Balbar, Greg Klymkiw
Votes: 3,612
"new and better heart — Kino!"
45. 6/64: Mama und Papa (Materialaktion Otto Mühl) (1964)
4 min | Short, Horror
A subversive and experimental film from director Kurt Kren.
Director: Kurt Kren | Stars: Ursula Holzbauer, Otto Muehl
Votes: 343
Wiener Aktionismus and its exquisite vulgarity.
46. Zero for Conduct (1933)
Not Rated | 47 min | Drama
In a repressive boarding school with rigid rules of behavior, four boys decide to rebel against the direction on a celebration day.
Director: Jean Vigo | Stars: Jean Dasté, Robert le Flon, Louis Lefebvre, Du Verron
Votes: 9,389
Anarchist 'school film' classic by Jean Vigo.
47. Death in the Seine (1989 TV Movie)
44 min | Drama, History
Historical drownings in the Seine are catalogued, dissected and elaborated, with multilayered visuals and 'documentary' asides.
Director: Peter Greenaway | Stars: Alan Franco, Jean-Michel Dagory, Jim van der Woude, Hans Verbrugge
Votes: 353
Peter Greenaway's catalogue of historical drownings.
48. Pig (1998)
23 min | Short, Horror
A young man journeys through a desert, where he is kidnapped by a sadistic stranger clad in a pig mask. The stranger proceeds to brutally torture the young man, who then finds himself ... See full summary »
Directors: Nico Bruinsma, Rozz Williams | Stars: James Hollan, Rozz Williams
Votes: 378
Transgressive and uneasy industrial fantasy by Nico B starring Rozz Williams.
49. Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1967)
22 min | Documentary, Short
Multi-screen multimedia environment and musical performance conducted under the supervision of Andy Warhol, featuring songs by The Velvet Underground and Nico, film screenings, and dance improvisation by famous Factory icons.
Director: Ronald Nameth | Stars: John Cale, Angus MacLise, Gerard Malanga, Sterling Morrison
Votes: 73
Registration of the early expanded cinema shows by Andy Warhol. The Velvet Underground and Nico performing with the superstars.
50. Boy with Cat (1966)
6 min | Comedy, Short
A cat's inquisitive look interferes with the pleasurable sensations of a boy while masturbating.
Director: Donald Richie
Votes: 95
A curious cat is the unintentional witness of a boy who is masturbating. Silly and disturbing 'charm offensive' by Donald Richie.
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