UCLA AMIA Student Chapter Takeover! Avant-garde Animation
- This is a past program
This program is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the screening series Archive Treasures: UCLA AMIA Student Chapter Takeover!
In person: Introduction by UCLA AMIA Student Chapter Programmer Noah Brockman.
Avant-garde cinema represents films that are experimental or innovative, typically rejecting traditional narrative structures while exploring abstract concepts and emphasizing visual and aural elements. Avant-garde animation often utilizes techniques that abstract form, defy continuity and emphasize musicality.
Freight Yard Symphony (1963)
Created during his time at the UCLA Animation Workshop, Robert Abel’s Freight Yard Symphony presents a sensorial impression of a commercial rail yard, in which the destruction of semiotics makes way for a new language of rhythm, where alphabetical and numerical language indicators become purely textural amongst the frenzied jazz score. Using photo collage and paper craft, Abel’s early modernist work showcases the immense talent of this future pioneer of visual effects.
Director: Robert Abel.
Choreography for the Copy Machine (Photocopy Cha Cha) (1991)
In Chel White’s Choreography for the Copy Machine (Photocopy Cha Cha), machine and human attempt to understand each other’s dissonant identities through the glass-plate barrier of a photocopy machine. This barrier, reminiscent of zoo or aquarium glass windows, distorts and abstracts to create a half-truth. Chel White straddles the line between sensual and grotesque representations of the human body, juxtaposed with the mundane artifacts that scaffold daily life, such as keys, currency, tools and playing cards.
Director: Chel White
The Science of Sleep (2006)
Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep synthesizes live action and animation to emphasize dissatisfaction with reality, and the lure of imagination. Made in the age of CGI pipelines overwhelmingly contributing to special effects in the future film industry, Gondry’s trademark whimsical style prioritizes practical effects, taking a minimal approach to visual effects. Blurring the lines between real life and fantasy, this film invites us to experience the impossible.
Director: Michel Gondry. Screenwriter: Michel Gondry. With: Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Mioux-Mioux.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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