Week 4 (July 12 – 18) – Roots of the Underground: Film-makers’ Coop

The Film-Makers’ Cooperative is a non-profit dedicated to experimental and avant-garde cinema; almost all of the most well-known American experimental filmmakers have had works in their catalogue at some point. 

A Dadaist post-Cubist art film conceived, written, and co-directed by Fernand Léger in collaboration with the filmmaker Dudley Murphy with cinematographic input from the legendary Man Ray, Ballet Mécanique is as gorgeous and groundbreaking today as it was nearly a hundred years ago. This isn’t your standard narrative; it is sixteen minutes of pure, rhythmic sensory overload.

This movie is about the pulse of the machine age. The screen is dominated by flashes of imagery: a young woman, a repetitive smile and then the chaos begins. We are treated to a swirling, whirling world of technology where concentric circles spin into infinity, pistons and gears perform a mechanical dance, and cars hurtle through frames with frantic repetition. Even carnival rides get in on the act, pushing and pulling and never finding a resting state. It is a world perpetually in motion, repeating itself in a hypnotic, frantic cycle.

The history behind the audio is as chaotic as the visuals. The composer George Antheil wrote an original score for the film, but there was a massive technical hurdle: his music clocked in at a staggering thirty minutes, while the film itself ran only sixteen. Because the two pieces didn’t align, the film spent decades playing in total silence or with whatever music a theater had on hand.