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THE
TOP 5
PROJECT

WEEK NO. 28
Main Page (including links to all past Top 5 weeks)

THE TOP 5 EXPERIMENTAL/AVANT-GARDE FILMS:

view full results       see how points are awarded
Rank Film Points L #1
#1 Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943) 34 8 4
#2 Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1929) 24 6 3
#3 Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967) 23 6 3
#4 Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977) 20 8 -
#5 L’Âge d’or (Luis Buñuel, 1930) 13 3 1
TIE Dog Star Man (Stan Brakhage, 1962-65) 13 4 -
L=How many lists each film appears on             #1=How many number one votes each film recieves

This was one of the tightest races in Top 5 Project history (which incidentally, dates all the way back to June 2005 - wow!!). In the end the winner was, coming as no real surprise, Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon with just 34 points - the lowest winning total in a while. Second place went to Luis Buñuel and his debut film, Un chien andalou, with 24 points. Third place (missing by just a point) went to Michael Snow's Wavelength (my personal favourite), with 23 points. Fourth place went to David Lynch's Eraserhead, with 20 points, and fifth place was a tie. The two spots went to Buñuel again, with his second film, L’Âge d’or and Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man - both films gathered 13 points.

Other famed avant-garde films with votes included Fireworks, Rose Hobart, Flaming Creatures and The Man with a Movie Camera while many films not usually associated with experimental filmmaking, such as The Gold Rush, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Birth of a Nation, Breathless, Nosferatu, Fantasia and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, were included in the voting.

Individual lists:

David Sterritt
Chairman, National Society of Film Critics

  1. Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967)

  2. Mongoloid (Bruce Conner, 1978)

  3. Sirius Remembered (Stan Brakhage, 1959)

  4. Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith, 1963)

  5. Side/Walk/Shuttle (Ernie Gehr, 1991)



Carrie Rickey
Film Critic, Philadelphia Inquirer

  1. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)

  2. Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967)

  3. Caravaggio (Derek Jarman, 1986)

  4. Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1962)

  5. The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 1968)



Jeffrey M. Anderson
Film Critic & Freelance Entertainment Writer
Las Vegas Weekly, Oakland Tribune

Talk about a tough topic. Most of the traditional, "classic" avant-garde films (Flaming Creatures, Scorpio Rising, A Movie, Jeanne Dielman, Out 1, Sans soleil, etc.) are difficult, if not impossible to see today, and a number of hit movies (Dogville, 2001, etc.) could be loosely classified as "avant-garde" or "experimental," so I've decided to place my list squarely in the middle: films I've seen and that are easy to find, and films that did not catch on in a big way.

  1. Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1929)

  2. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)

  3. Mysterious Object at Noon (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2000)

  4. Gerry (Gus Van Sant, 2002)

  5. Prayer (Jay Rosenblatt, 2002)

Runners up: The Falls (1980, Peter Greenaway, UK); Rose Hobart (1936, Joseph Cornell, USA); Black Ice (1994, Stan Brakhage, USA); Fata Morgana (1971, Werner Herzog, Germany); Spectres of the Spectrum (1999, Craig Baldwin, USA); Another Girl Another Planet (1992, Michael Almereyda, USA); The Heart of the World (2000, Guy Maddin, Canada); Week-end (1967, Jan-Luc Godard, France); La Jetée (1962, Chris Marker, France).


Christopher Null
Founder, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Filmcritic.com

  1. Slacker (Richard Linklater, 1991) - Linklater's masterpiece doesn't spend more than a few minutes with any character before zipping us along to someone and something new... kind of like life, in a perverse way, and a subtle commentary on our collective attention spans. Hey, a puppy!

  2. Swimming to Cambodia (Jonathan Demme, 1987) - Can you make a near-perfect movie with one dude talking for 90 minutes? Yes you can.

  3. Festen (The Celebration) (Thomas Vinterberg, 1998) - Dogme #1 and, for my money, still the best Dogme 95 movie ever made.

  4. Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977) - No best experimental film list would be complete without David Lynch's iconic oddity.

  5. F for Fake (Orson Welles, 1974) - Orson Welles' most avant-garde production, half documentary, half something else entirely. Nearly impossible to describe.



Rick Curnutte
Film Critic & Editor, The Film Journal

  1. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)

  2. Landscape Suicide (James Benning, 1986)

  3. Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967)

  4. Dog Star Man (Stan Brakhage, 1962-1964)

  5. L'Ange (Patrick Bokanowski, 1982)



Dennis Schwartz
Film Critic Ozu's World Movie Reviews

  1. Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1929)

  2. Dog Star Man (Stan Brakhage, 1964)

  3. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)

  4. Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger, 1964)

  5. Back Against the Wall (James Fotopoulos, 2002)



Film Prophet
Film Critic, FilmProphet.com

  1. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

  2. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)

  3. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)

  4. Twelve Monkeys (Terry Gilliam, 1995)

  5. Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922)



Michael Parent
Film Student

  1. L’Âge d’or (Luis Buñuel, 1930) - Written both by Buñuel and Dali this film has a strong visual. It is one of the most inspiring films, it is violent, it is erotic and it’s from Bunuel so it’s great. The surrealistic movement was at his best at that time and has an amateur of paintings I had the chance to see some Dali’s in Europe this summer and I was amaze to see lots of elements both present in L’Âge d’or and in his paintings.

  2. The Gold Rush (Charlie Chaplin, 1925) - The first millionaire of Cinema has brought so much to the industry that every film he has directed is an Avant-Garde film to me. Every time I watch one of his films it’s like analyzing history and the time the films was made. He was an artist at the top of the art.

  3. Battleship Potemkin (Sergeï M. Eisenstein, 1925) - A gold mine in talent from USSR, Eisenstein was a true artist. He brought so much and had such guts to make Ivan the terrible I & II as comparisons to Stalin’s overuse of power. Battleship Potemkin is a masterpiece in every fuckin’ way.

  4. The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915) - How could this not be a Masterpiece, an avant-garde, a precursor, a way to tell a story? Well, Griffith initiated many narrating elements with this amazing epic on what would have been a second Civil war…

  5. La Belle et la Bête (Jean Cocteau, 1946) - Cocteau doesn’t need a presentation, a true poet that turned everything he touched into diamonds.



Adam Trovillion
Film Enthusiast

  1. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel, 1972)

  2. Week-end (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)

  3. Dog Star Man (Stan Brakhage, 1962-64)

  4. Zerkalo (The Mirror) (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)

  5. Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)



Jeff Cardarelli
Film Enthusiast

  1. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)

  2. Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)

  3. The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

  4. Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1929)

  5. Food (Jan Svankmajer, 1992)



Matt Severson
Film Enthusiast

  1. Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1929)

  2. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)

  3. Mothlight (Stan Brakhage, 1963)

  4. Fireworks (Kenneth Anger, 1947)

  5. Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967)



Kevin Cassidy
Film Enthusiast

  1. Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell, 1936) - Not only the best Avant-Garde film, one of the greatest films EVER

  2. L'Âge d'or (Luis Buñuel, 1930)

  3. Pleasures of War (Ruth Lingford, 1998)

  4. Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Robert Enrico, 1962)

  5. The Fall of the House of Usher (James Sibley Watson/Melville Webber, 1928)



Chris Cathcart
Film Enthusiast

  1. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)

  2. Schizopolis (Steven Soderbergh, 1996)

  3. Conspirators of Pleasure (Jan Svankmajer, 1996)

  4. Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)

  5. Blood of a Poet (Jean Cocteau, 1930)



Mathew Viola
Film Fanatic

  1. Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1929) - With its skewed sense of time, surrealistic imagery, fractured narrative and emphasis on sex, violence, and death, Un chien andalou stunningly evokes the irrationality of a dream state. Based on actual dreams of Dali and Bunuel, the images seem to have been transferred intact from the dark recesses of the subconscious directly to the celluloid; it's as if the rational apparatus has been completely disconnected, leaving a direct, unfiltered view of the violent, sexually charged dream fantasies of the irrational mind. Absurdist humor abounds as well, like the hilariously nonsensical intertitles.

  2. L' Âge d'or (Luis Buñuel, 1930) - Buñuel's gleefully subversive attack on the repressive dogma of the Church suggests, with typically wry wit, that sexual repression breeds both violence and unnatural forms of sexual behavior. Continually blocked from satisfying their sexual desires, the frustrated would-be lovers find release in other ways: our "hero" kicks a small dog, knocks over a blind man, and slaps a lady for no good reason, while our "heroine" makes out with her father and, in one of the most erotic moments in cinema, lustfully sucks the toes of a marble statue! The hilarity reaches its satiric climax in a final scene of delicious, outrageous blasphemy.

  3. Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977) - I think Lynch was terrified of becoming like Henry - an alienated, lonely nonentity adrift in a desolate urban landscape, trapped in a domestic nightmare, with no freedom, joy, or creative outlet. Thus, the bizarre visuals and creepy soundtrack of Eraserhead may be seen as the Expressionistic embodiment of Lynch's nightmarish fears of urban decay, poverty, fatherhood, and stifling domesticity. However one may interpret Eraserhead, it remains one of the most highly imaginative, deeply personal films ever made, an utterly unique, fascinating mood piece that retains its capacity to disturb, provoke, mystify, and, yes, delight even after countless viewings.

  4. The Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929) - The Man with a Movie Camera is not only an imaginatively self-reflexive work, which ironically comments on its own making by showing the cameraman shooting it, the editor cutting it and an audience watching it, it's also the apotheosis of the art of montage, whose symphony of images culminates in a rhapsodic crescendo that makes the quick cutting of MTV videos look like models of the long take. What an exhilarating piece of cinematic art!

  5. La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962) - Using only still photos, narration and music, Marker creates a surprisingly effective post-apocalyptic sci-fi film, the hero of which travels back in time to the land of the living, desperate to recapture a haunting moment from his childhood, only to be confronted by a deathly revelation.



Doug Pratt
DVD Critic, DVDLaser.com

Top 5 feature-length experimental films:

  1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

  2. Fantasia (Alger/Armstrong/Beebe..., 1940)

  3. Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)

  4. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

  5. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Weine, 1920)



Top 5 short experimental films:

  1. Meshes in the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)

  2. Romance Sentimentale (Sergei Eisenstein, 1930)

  3. Blood of a Poet (Jean Cocteau, 1930)

  4. Night on Bald Mountain (Alexander Alexeieff/Claire Parker, 1933)

  5. C'Etait un Rendezvous (Claude Lelouch, 1976)



Jesse Richards
Filmmaker

  1. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)

  2. The Foreigner (Amos Poe, 1978)

  3. Police State (Nick Zedd, 1987)

  4. Medway Wheelers (Wolf Howard, 2005)

  5. Modern Young Man (Harris Smith, 2000)

Other than Deren's film I took this opportunity to note some of the great punk and no-wave films out there.


Jay Antani
Film Critic

  1. Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967)

  2. Dog Star Man (Stan Brakhage, 1962-64)

  3. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)

  4. Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1929)

  5. Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)



Jason Mlinarsik
Film Enthusiast

  1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

  2. Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)

  3. Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003)

  4. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel, 1972)

  5. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)



Jesse Walker
Film Enthusiast and Managing Editor, Reason Magazine

Definitional problems abound. Is Porky in Wackyland an experimental film? Is Repulsion? Orpheus? Persona? What about Titicut Follies? Is Charley Bowers an experimental filmmaker? How about Cronenberg? Cassavetes? The Fleischer brothers? Melies? I'm on record -- on this very site, no less! -- as calling Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda "a landmark underground film, as daring and unconventional as anything by Brakhage, Deren, or Conner." So does that go into the mix?

I left all those out, but I'm not sure that was the right thing to do. I even excluded Luis Buñuel, on the theory that I should be discriminating against narrative films. Or maybe it was just to help narrow things down:

  1. Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell, 1936) - The first and greatest unauthorized reedit of a Hollywood potboiler.

  2. Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, 1982) - "The more you watch Japanese television, the more you feel it's watching you."

  3. Punch and Judy (Jan Svankmajer, 1966) - It was hard to restrict myself to just one Svankmajer film, but this tale of two feuding puppets represents his work nicely.

  4. Rainbow Dance (Len Lye, 1936) - Feels like it was made in 1986, not 1936.

  5. Television Assassination (Bruce Conner, 1976/1995) - Eat your heart out, Zapruder. You too, Stone.



Paul van Emmerik
Film Enthusiast

  1. Careful (Guy Maddin, 1992)

  2. Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)

  3. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (Peter Greenaway, 1989)

  4. The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)

  5. Last Days (Gus Van Sant, 2005)



Ricardo Luis Alvarez
Film Enthusiast

  1. Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1962)

  2. Images (Robert Altman, 1972)

  3. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)

  4. Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, 2000)

  5. Waking Life (Richard Linklater, 2001)



Kevyn Knox
Film Critic, Essayist + Historian

First one must ask oneself, "what is an experimental film?". A loose interpretation would include films such as 2001, Potemkin, Dogville, F for Fake and Eraserhead, not to mention much of the oeuvre of Buñuel, Jarman, Svankmajer, Rivette, Resnais and Godard. Many of the above mentioned have been included in my colleagues lists, and rightfully so if you choose to cast a wide net around the terms experimental and avant-garde. An argument could even be made for Griffith, Murnau and other early pioneers - since everything was experiemntal back in those days. I decided to cast a much tighter shadow, including films that would by no means be confused with mainstream narrative filmmaking. Incidentally, the first two films on my list can also be found on my top twenty films of all-time list.

  1. Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967)

  2. Schwechater (Peter Kubelka, 1958)

  3. Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith, 1963)

  4. The Very Eye of Night (Maya Deren, 1958)

    a note: Most have included Deren's Meshes, but I greatly prefer her Very Eye of Night to her other works - a precurser (along with Kubelka's Adebar) to the opening moments of Lynch's Grand Inquisitor opus, Mulholland Dr..

  5. Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1962)

Runners-Up:
Un chien andalou (Buñuel), La Jetée (Marker) and The Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov).

Possible future inclusions onto this list (if only I ever see them):
The Cremaster Series (Barney), La Région centrale (Snow), Holy Mountain (Jodorowsky), and Out 1 (Rivette) - which will finally be seen about two weeks after the deadline for this list.

*points are given as follows: for numbered lists, first place recieves 5 points, second place recieves 4, third place 3, fourth place 2 and fifth place gets 1 point; for unumbered lists, each film will recieve 3 points; total points are then tallied up and a comprehensive Top 5 list is created


The Next Topic is:
Name The Top 5
ROBERT ALTMAN FILMS

e-mail me at kevynknox@thecinematheque.com with your picks for week #29,
no later than 6pm on Sunday, December 3, 2006.

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