Re: collage film history

From: Bruce Checefsky (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Jun 29 2009 - 12:49:43 PDT


There were many attempts at film collage early in the 20th C. but not all were successful. By the 1920's, filmmakers (mainly European) were combining film with other materials (paint, for example), removing the surface of the film, or double and triple printing of the negative. For example, Hungarian Dada artist and avant-garde filmmaker György Gerö , born in 1905, initiated and made the first Hungarian avantgarde film based on a book by Lajos Kassák. It was essentially a cinema collage, multiple images on a single frame. His filmproject Bela was published in the magazine IS, 1924. Gerö designed his own vision, according to which only a few techniques correspond to the actual nature of film. The original scene-by-scene film script and complete scenario of the film consist of 3 pages currently housed in the Hungarian National Library. The film was never made. I’m currently working to produce his film.

BRUCE CHECEFSKY | Director, Reinberger Galleries
Voice: 216-421-7407 | email suppressed
The Cleveland Institute of Art | 11141 East Boulevard, Cleveland, OH 44106

________________________________________
From: Experimental Film Discussion List [email suppressed]
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2009 3:25 PM
To: email suppressed
Subject: Re: collage film history

Ballet Mechanique, Emak Bakia and Le Retour a la Raison would be among the
earliest collage films, if the term is understood as the moving image
equivalent of work in other media by Picabia, Picasso, Hans Arp, Raoul
Hausmann and Kurt Schwitters.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Myron Ort" <email suppressed>
To: <email suppressed>
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2009 12:06 PM
Subject: Re: collage film history

> montage, collage, .... this gets confusing.
>
> putting movie shots together, whatever the source (found footage, stock
> footage, newly shot footage, or otherwise), is generally called montage
> or "editing", is it not?
>
> "Collage Animation" to me suggests art collage inspired films like those
> of Joseph Cornell, Harry Smith, Robert Breer, Larry Jordan, and perhaps
> other even earlier examples.
>
> "Collage" in film would be to me something like the circular punched
> out baby image fastened into a circular hole on another image exampled in
> Brakhage's "Dog Star Man", or for that matter the work done to make his
> "Mothlight" and "Garden of Earthly Delights".
>
>
> To me the term "collage film form" might be problematic.
>
> Myron Ort
>
>
>
> On Jun 29, 2009, at 5:51 AM, William Kaizen wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Can anybody point me to any good academic references or other solid
>> references on the history of collage film? I am especially interested
>> in when, historically, the term collage first became associated with
>> cinema rather than works on paper or canvas, and in the
>> differentiation historically between cinematic montage and the use of
>> cinematic collage, including the appropriation of found footage. Was
>> the term in use in the late 1950s and early 1960s when filmmakers like
>> Robert Breer and others began experimenting with the collage film
>> form, or was it applied by later artists and/or scholars?
>>
>> Thanks for any thoughts or ideas!
>>
>> --- Bill
>>
>>
>> __________________________________________________________________
>> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>>
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>

__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.

__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.