Film as a Subversive Art
Eye on Art: Film as a Subversive Art
An evening dedicated to Amos Vogel’s influential book Film as A Subversive Art (1974), which was hugely important to Albert Serra, subject of our exhibition. With short films referenced in the book from the Eye collection (16 & 35mm) and a lecture by Eye programmer Thijs Havens.
Catalan director Albert Serra makes contrary films that carry out radical experiments with cinematic forms. Serra's ideas were heavily influenced by the book Film as a Subversive Art (1974) by legendary film critic and programmer Amos Vogel. As well as a viewing list that is still inspirational today, this book contains a number of essays in which Vogel makes a convincing argument that cinema is the ultimate modern artform because only in the medium of film is total artistic control over time and space possible. This makes cinema the most suitable of all the arts for investigating the capricious, chaotic nature of the modern age.
Vogel stresses that only a very small proportion of films successfully make use of this subversive potential of cinematic art. Following on from Vogel, Serra also believes that the only films that matter are films that are subversive in one way or another – i.e. films that challenge the status quo. This can be done in countless ways, both in form and content: through themes, screenplays, mise en scène, editing, cinematography, sound design, how the actors are directed, et cetera. What matters is that risks are taken and that the work strays from the beaten track. For Serra, this cinematic nonconformism is a guiding principle in all his work.
See also the article by Eye programmer Thijs Havens in our online magazine.
Programme
Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943, 14') (16mm print from the Eye collection)
Experimental film classic by pioneer Maya Deren. Dreamy narrative in which time, space and movement are frozen, delayed, accelerated, repeated or otherwise placed outside of the logical order of things. Time after time a woman (Deren) follows another woman, dressed in black, carrying a flower and with a mirror for a face. Dream and reality interweave; a clock ticks; a man appears.
L'Opéra-Mouffe (Agnès Varda, 1958, 16') (35mm print from the Eye collection)
Short film made by Varda while pregnant; an impressionist documentary, shot in the Rue Mouffetard (‘La Mouffe’), a down-at-heel market area in Paris. A couple making love hold the film together; their tender surrender to one another, beautifully captured by Varda’s camera, contrasts with the shabby environment; a sensitive work on the inner life of a pregnant woman.
Big Business (James W. Horne & Leo McCarey, 1929, 20') (16mm print from the Eye collection)
Laurel & Hardy classic: after a man refuses to buy a Christman tree from the pair, they demolish his house. Things gradually escalate in increments: starting with insults hurled on both sides; a necktie is chopped off with scissors; then step-by-step the domestic disorder builds to a cataclysm, leaving nothing of the All-American Home standing.
This is part of
Details
Production year
2024
Length
90 min.
Event language
English
Country
NL
Part of
Albert Serra
Eye Filmmuseum presents the first exhibition in the Netherlands about the work of Catalan film and theatre director Albert Serra. Transforming the entire exhibition space into an immersive stage, Serra orchestrates nocturnal and clandestine encounters where theatre, cinema, and art converge.
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