Unseen Cinema 6: The Amateur as Auteur

Streaming video - 1925

AMATEUR AS AUTEUR is part of the film retrospective UNSEEN CINEMA that explores long-forgotten American experimental cinema.. These home-made films incorporate avant-garde strategies and techniques to reveal a true sense of cinematic intimacy. Glimpses of life caught unawares are found in the home movies of Elizabeth Woodman Wright, Archie Stewart, Frank Stauffacher, and John C. Hecker. Poetic lyricism finds a voice in the city symphonies of Lynn Riggs’ A Day in Santa Fe (1931) and Rudy Burckhardt’s Haiti (1938). Professionally minded films, like Theodore Case’s Sound Tests (c.1925) and Lewis Jacobs’ Tree Trunk to Head (1938), operate from a similar home-spun perspective of sincerity. Joseph Cornell offers his enigmatic cinema that ...serves as a lovely homage to childhood innocence.. 19 films by featured directors: G.W. Billy Bitzer, Rudy Burckhardt, Theodore Case, Joseph Cornell, John C. Hecker, James Hughes, Lewis Jacobs, Lynn Riggs, Earl Sponable, Frank Stauffacher, Archie Stewart, Elizabeth Woodman Wright.. Curated by Bruce Posner and produced by David Shepard. “UNSEEN CINEMA defines the term avant-garde with the same playfulness with which many amateurs approached the new budding medium.” - Frankfurter Allgemeine. “What are home movies doing in an avant-garde program? A good deal–those who are familiar with Magritte’s cinematic work or Man Ray’s later films know precisely how important home movies inspired visual artists working in the medium.” - Frankfurter Rundschau. Made possible in part by Cineric, Inc., Eastman Kodak Company, Film Preservation Associates more