Avant-Garde/Experimental film - Melvelet's favourites
by Melvelet | created - 05 Apr 2016 | updated - 18 Apr 2016 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. Sans Soleil (1983)
Not Rated | 100 min | Documentary, Drama
A woman narrates the contemplative writings of a seasoned world traveler, focusing on contemporary Japan.
Director: Chris Marker | Stars: Amilcar Cabral, Florence Delay, Arielle Dombasle, Riyoko Ikeda
Votes: 12,136 | Gross: $0.03M
2. Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
Not Rated | 68 min | Documentary
A man travels around a city with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling invention.
Director: Dziga Vertov | Stars: Mikhail Kaufman, Elizaveta Svilova
Votes: 28,002
3. A Page of Madness (1926)
Not Rated | 70 min | Drama, Horror, Thriller
A man takes a job at an asylum with hopes of freeing his imprisoned wife.
Director: Teinosuke Kinugasa | Stars: Masuo Inoue, Ayako Iijima, Yoshie Nakagawa, Hiroshi Nemoto
Votes: 4,574
4. 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: 37,072
5. 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: 53,819
6. The Grandmother (1970)
Not Rated | 34 min | Animation, Short, Horror
A young boy plants some strange seeds and they grow into a grandmother.
Director: David Lynch | Stars: Dorothy McGinnis, Richard White, Virginia Maitland, Robert Chadwick
Votes: 7,363
7. 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: 15,212
8. Decasia (2002)
Not Rated | 70 min | Documentary
A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.
Director: Bill Morrison | Stars: Tsuru Aoki, Julia Calhoun, Margaret Cullington, William S. Hart
Votes: 1,059
9. Berlin: Symphony of Metropolis (1927)
Not Rated | 65 min | Documentary
This movie shows us one day in Berlin, the rhythm of that time, starting at the earliest morning and ends in the deepest night.
Director: Walter Ruttmann | Star: Paul von Hindenburg
Votes: 4,798
10. 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: 3,605
11. 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: 3,293
12. 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: 2,733
13. 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: 3,709
14. Six Men Getting Sick (1967)
TV-PG | 4 min | Animation, Short, Horror
A short continuously looping animation of six grotesque human figures vomiting.
Director: David Lynch
Votes: 6,490
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: 4,198
16. At Land (1944)
15 min | Short, Drama, Fantasy
Silently, a woman wakes on a beach as the tides go in reverse. Her dreamscape unfolds as she tries to locate a chess piece traveling from the beach to a party to a country road and then back.
Director: Maya Deren | Stars: John Cage, Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid, Hella Heyman
Votes: 3,344
17. The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (1928)
Not Rated | 11 min | Short, Drama, Horror
A wannabe movie star experiences the surreal horrors of dehumanization at the bottom of Hollywood's social ladder as his hopes for success vanish and his identity is reduced to a number.
Directors: Robert Florey, Slavko Vorkapich | Stars: Jules Raucourt, Voya George, Robert Florey, Adriane Marsh
Votes: 1,426
18. Return to Reason (1923)
3 min | Short
Experimental film, white specks and shapes gyrating over a black background, a light-striped torso, a gyrating eggcrate. One of the first Dadaist films.
Director: Man Ray | Star: Kiki of Montparnasse
Votes: 2,202
19. H2O (1929)
13 min | Documentary, Short
A study on water, the reflections and motions of the liquid that accentuates its ethereality and metallic beauty.
Director: Ralph Steiner
Votes: 773
20. Film (1965)
Not Rated | 20 min | Short, Drama
A twenty-minute, almost totally silent film (no dialogue or music, save one 'shhh!') in which Buster Keaton attempts to evade observation by an all-seeing eye. But, as the film is based ... See full summary »
Directors: Samuel Beckett, Alan Schneider | Stars: Buster Keaton, Nell Harrison, James Karen, Susan Reed
Votes: 2,291
21. Ako (1964)
29 min | Short, Drama
Follows Ako, a 16-year-old Japanese girl, as she spends time working in a bakery and going out with her friends.
Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara | Stars: Miki Irie, Teruko Hasegawa, Yoko Matsushita
Votes: 444
22. By Night with Torch and Spear (1942)
8 min | Short
Montage of archive footage from industrial, nature and ethnographic documentaries -- a steelworks, caterpillars, Native American dances, camel trains -- made strange by juxtaposition and upside-down, backwards and negative printing.
Director: Joseph Cornell
Votes: 359
23. Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1961)
Not Rated | 28 min | Short, Adventure, Drama
In 1862, during the American Civil War, a Southern civilian is about to be hanged for attempting to sabotage a railway bridge. When the execution takes place from the bridge, the rope breaks and he begins his escape toward home.
Director: Robert Enrico | Stars: Roger Jacquet, Anne Cornaly, Anker-Spang Larsen, Stéphane Fey
Votes: 4,261
24. Fireworks (1947)
20 min | Short, Drama, Horror
A dissatisfied dreamer awakes, goes out in the night seeking a 'light' and is drawn through the needle's eye. A dream of a dream, he returns to bed less empty than before.
Director: Kenneth Anger | Stars: Kenneth Anger, Gordon Gray, Bill Seltzer
Votes: 2,905
25. Light Is Calling (2004)
8 min | Short
A scene from The Bells (1926) is optically reprinted and edited to Michael Gordon¹s 7 minute composition. A meditation on the fleeting nature of life and love, as seen through the roiling emulsion of an film.
Director: Bill Morrison | Stars: Eddie Phillips, Lola Todd
Votes: 506
26. 37/78: Tree Again (1978)
3 min | Documentary, Short
At the center are takes which do not change - a tree in a field in Vermont, U.S.A. Since the film was shot over a period of fifty days, the single frame shots create a storm of pictures.
Director: Kurt Kren
Votes: 224
27. 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: 5,711
28. 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: 3,018
29. Schwechater (1958)
1 min | Short
A short film originally intended to be a commercial for Schwechater Beer, but along the way it morphed into something completely different.
Director: Peter Kubelka
Votes: 859
30. Cosmic Ray (1962)
4 min | Short
Experimental short uses Ray Charles' "What'd I Say" as accompaniment to constantly shifting collage of female nude, cartoons, and newsreels of atomic bomb explosions.
Director: Bruce Conner
Votes: 639
31. Opus IV (1925)
4 min | Animation, Short
Walter Ruttmann's (Metropolis 1927) fourth abstract animated short in the series. In this the last film he has found a cohesion between the music and the action. The synergy between the music and the on screen action can be felt.
Director: Walter Ruttmann
Votes: 415
32. Moods of the Sea (1942)
Unrated | 10 min | Short, Musical
A recently unearthed experimental documentary of the crashing sea set to Mendelssohn's "Fingal's Cave." An example of the filmmakers' "new cinema" theory which held that film should be more... See full summary »
Directors: John Hoffman, Slavko Vorkapich
Votes: 270
33. Krakatau (1986)
11 min | Short
An portrait of madness and inner turmoil, conveyed through mesmeric images of dreamlike intensity.
Director: Mariusz Grzegorzek | Star: Katarzyna Bargielowska
Votes: 69
34. Damon the Mower (1972)
3 min | Animation, Short
This short uses an experimental form to illustrate a poem by Andrew Marvell.
Director: George Dunning
Votes: 284
35. Lacrimae rerum (1962)
11 min | Short
A psychedelic journey into dead nature, an eccentric classical music video, an ode to life itself.
Director: Nikos Nikolaidis
Votes: 104
36. Combat de boxe (1927)
8 min | Short, Sport
Two boxers face off in a surreal boxing match.
Director: Charles Dekeukeleire | Stars: Pierre Bourgeois, Jean Demey, Henri Dupont, André Saint-Germain
Votes: 196
37. Mosaic in Trust (1955)
16 min | Short
A short experimental film by Peter Kubelka which edits film and sound clips together.
Director: Peter Kubelka | Stars: Frederick Putnik, Johann Bayer, Magda Denov, Leo Zwirchmeyer
Votes: 137
38. The Hand (1965)
18 min | Animation, Short, Horror
A delicate and secluded ceramist sees his orderly life turn upside down, when a gigantic hand in a white glove invades his space, demanding that a sculpture of itself is made. When will the hand's obstinate demands stop?
Director: Jirí Trnka
Votes: 2,049
39. Freiheit (1966)
3 min | Drama, Short
This film shows a German student (Randal Kleiser) escaping across the Berlin Border and being shot to death, while on the soundtrack, various platitudes about dying for freedom can be heard.
Director: George Lucas | Stars: Randal Kleiser, Christopher Lewis
Votes: 844
40. Mothlight (1963)
4 min | Short
A "found foliage" film composed of insects, leaves, and other detritus sandwiched between two strips of perforated tape.
Director: Stan Brakhage
Votes: 2,859
41. Kitchen Sink (1989)
14 min | Short, Horror
A woman finds something quaint in her kitchen sink and feels strangely captivated towards it.
Director: Alison Maclean | Stars: Theresa Healey, Peter Tait, Annagretta Christian
Votes: 1,184
42. News from Home (1976)
85 min | Documentary
Impersonal and beautiful images of Akerman's life in New York are combined with letters from her loving but manipulative mother, read by Akerman herself.
Director: Chantal Akerman | Star: Chantal Akerman
Votes: 2,813
43. The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (1971)
Not Rated | 32 min | Documentary, Short, Horror
At a morgue, forensic pathologists conduct autopsies of the corpses assigned.
Director: Stan Brakhage
Votes: 1,665
44. Mother Dao, the Turtlelike (1995)
90 min | Documentary
In a span of ninety minutes the film aims to show how the Netherlands administered its colony as a colonial enterprise and what the relations were like at the time. The usual commentary has... See full summary »
Director: Vincent Monnikendam
Votes: 179
45. Fire in Castilla (Tactilvision from the Moor of the Fright) (1960)
20 min | Documentary, Short
Short documentary featuring sculptures of Alonso de Berruguete and Juan de Juni in the Valladolid National Museum.
Director: José Val del Omar | Star: José Val del Omar
Votes: 462
46. Leviathan (I) (2012)
Not Rated | 87 min | Documentary
A documentary shot in the North Atlantic and focused on the commercial fishing industry.
Directors: Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel | Stars: Brian Jannelle, Adrian Guillette, Arthur Smith, Asterias Vulgaris
Votes: 3,795 | Gross: $1.09M
47. Two Years at Sea (2011)
Not Rated | 88 min | Documentary
After working at sea, a man realizes his dream of moving to the middle of the forest.
Director: Ben Rivers | Star: Jake Williams
Votes: 633
48. Ryakushô: renzoku shasatsuma (1975)
86 min | Documentary, Biography, Crime
A visual document of the life of serial killer Norio Nagayama, focusing entirely of his living environment with some narrated biographical information.
Director: Masao Adachi | Star: Masao Adachi
Votes: 222
49. Four Seasons (1975)
29 min | Documentary, Short
The last collaboration of Artavazd Peleshian and cinematographer Mikhail Vartanov is a film-essay about Armenia's shepherds, about the contradiction and the harmony between man and nature, scored to Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
Director: Artavazd Peleshian
Votes: 928
50. Rain (1929)
12 min | Documentary, Short
Regen is an experimental documentary film directed by Joris Ivens in 1929. It can be defined as a cinematic-poem. In 2021 Breve Storia Del Cinema restored the film with a new score composed by Nikolas Labrinakos.
Directors: Mannus Franken, Joris Ivens
Votes: 1,914
51. Nothing But Time (1926)
45 min | Documentary
The life of a great city (Paris) from dawn until dusk, including the beautiful and the ragged, the rich and the poor, with little or no comment (intertitles) from the director, Cavalcanti (whose first film this was).
Director: Alberto Cavalcanti | Stars: Blanche Bernis, Nina Chousvalowa, Philippe Hériat, Clifford McLaglen
Votes: 587
52. Daybreak Express (1953)
5 min | Documentary, Short, Music
Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording of "Daybreak Expresa" this is a five-minute short on the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated train line in Manhattan, New York City.
Director: D.A. Pennebaker
Votes: 1,335
53. Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Not Rated | 94 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance
In a strange and isolated chateau, a man becomes acquainted with a woman and insists that they have met before.
Director: Alain Resnais | Stars: Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoëff, Françoise Bertin
Votes: 24,889 | Gross: $0.06M
54. Tsuitô no zawameki (1988)
150 min | Drama
In the slums of Osaka, various marginalized misfits have their own interpretations of love. Completely alienated from the outside world, they commit sexual perversions, violence and cannibalism.
Director: Yoshihiko Matsui | Stars: Toshihiko Hino, Simon Kumai, Yukiko Murata, Mamiko Nakai
Votes: 351
55. Limit (1931)
Not Rated | 114 min | Drama, Romance
Three people (Raul Schnoor, Olga Breno and Tatiana Rey) sail aimlessly while remembering their past.
Director: Mario Peixoto | Stars: Olga Breno, Tatiana Rey, Raul Schnoor, Brutus Pedreira
Votes: 2,879
56. La glace à trois faces (1927)
45 min | Drama, Romance
Psychological narrative avantgarde film about a wealthy young businessman who consecutively falls in love with a classy English woman (Pearl), a Russian sculptress (Athalia), and a naive ... See full summary »
Director: Jean Epstein | Stars: Jeanne Helbling, Suzy Pierson, Olga Day, Raymond Guérin-Catelain
Votes: 966
57. The Faithful Heart (1923)
Not Rated | 87 min | Drama, Romance
Marie wants to escape from her job and also from her lover, Paul, an unemployed drunk. She dreams of going off with Jean, a dockworker. The two men quarrel and fight over Marie on two ... See full summary »
Director: Jean Epstein | Stars: Léon Mathot, Gina Manès, Edmond Van Daële, Claude Benedict
Votes: 1,456
58. The Last Laugh (1924)
Not Rated | 90 min | Drama
An aging doorman is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbors and society after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious hotel.
Director: F.W. Murnau | Stars: Emil Jannings, Maly Delschaft, Max Hiller, Emilie Kurz
Votes: 15,212 | Gross: $0.09M
59. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Not Rated | 67 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Hypnotist Dr. Caligari uses a somnambulist, Cesare, to commit murders.
Director: Robert Wiene | Stars: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher, Lil Dagover
Votes: 70,083
60. London to Brighton in Four Minutes (1952 TV Short)
4 min | Documentary, Short
A short film which documents the 4 minute train ride from London to Brighton.
Votes: 200
61. Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974)
104 min | Drama, Fantasy
A young boys' coming of age tale set in a strange, carnivalesque village becomes the recreation of a memory that the director has twenty years later.
Director: Shûji Terayama | Stars: Kaoru Yachigusa, Keiko Niitaka, Masumi Harukawa, Kan Mikami
Votes: 2,410
62. Eldorado (1921)
100 min | Drama
Sibilla is a single mother, working as a gypsy dancer in a lousy cafe in the south of Spain. Unable to keep with the costs of his son's medical bills, she asks for help to Estiria, her ... See full summary »
Director: Marcel L'Herbier | Stars: Ève Francis, Jaque Catelain, Marcelle Pradot, Philippe Hériat
Votes: 493
63. The Man Who Sleeps (1974)
77 min | Drama
A 25-year-old male student in Paris becomes indifferent to the world around him, and subsequently feels a strong sense of alienation and hopelessness.
Director: Bernard Queysanne | Stars: Jacques Spiesser, Ludmila Mikaël
Votes: 4,656
64. Horse Money (2014)
Unrated | 103 min | Drama
"The time is now, a numbing and timeless present of hospital stays, bureaucratic questioning, and wandering through remembered spaces... and suddenly it is also then, the mid '70s and the ... See full summary »
Director: Pedro Costa | Stars: Ventura, Vitalina Varela, Tito Furtado, Benvindo Tavares
Votes: 1,953
65. Tren de sombras (1997)
88 min | Drama
A silent homage to the origins of cinema, recreating the apparent disappearance of a French photographer in the 1920s. Experimental.
Director: José Luis Guerín | Stars: Juliette Gautier, Ivon Orvain, Anne Céline Auche, Céline Laurent
Votes: 636
66. Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
Not Rated | 202 min | Drama
A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores, takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet. However, something happens that changes her safe routine.
Director: Chantal Akerman | Stars: Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Henri Storck, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
Votes: 13,928 | Gross: $0.02M
67. Szél (1996)
Not Rated | 6 min | Drama, Short
During a film course lead by Yvette Biro at the Hungarian Academy of Drama and film in 1995, the director students were shown a black-and-white photo taken by Lucien Herve in 1952, and they... See full summary »
Director: Marcell Iványi | Stars: Szilvia Czobor, Ilona Somogyi, Margit Gyovai
Votes: 1,190
68. The Flat (1968)
13 min | Animation, Short, Comedy
A nondescript man is trapped in a sinister flat, where nothing seems to obey the laws of nature.
Director: Jan Svankmajer | Stars: Ivan Kraus, Juraj Herz
Votes: 1,852
69. Dog's Dialogue (1977)
22 min | Short
A charming tale of murder, perversity and narrative echoes told through shots of barking dogs and a La jetée-like series of stills.
Director: Raúl Ruiz | Stars: Eva Simonet, Robert Darmel, Silke Humel, Frank Lesne
Votes: 524
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