The Afterlives of the Avant-Garde: The 1920s-1930s and the 1960s-1970s

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

This roundtable aims at thinking through the afterlives of the early twentieth century avant-garde in experimental and art cinema of the 1960s-1970s in both the Soviet and international contexts. By illuminating different aspects of these afterlives the members of the roundtable hope to open up a discussion of aesthetic and political continuities and changes between the two periods. Emma Widdis will discuss the afterlives of Soviet affect, with a focus on animal life and the different ways in which non-human forms are instrumentalized in the avant-gardes of the 1920s and the 1960s. Michael Kunichika will consider the legacy of Soviet avant-garde in the 1960s and the 1970s when we find its survivals and transformations in a range of educational films, which marked the transformation of avant-garde films into stock footage. Olga Kim will discuss the return to and transformation of the “primitive” senses and pre-modern sensibilities of the 1920s-1930s in the late Soviet art cinema in the republics. Pavle Levi will reflect on the ways in which the 1960s-1970s cineastes in socialist Yugoslavia adapted and transformed some lessons of “Soviet montage” through a creative combinatory with Dada and Surrealism, but also Bazin’s thought. Anne Eakin Moss will talk about the American reception of Soviet avant-garde cinema and the way that set the stage for a (mis)understanding of the stakes of Soviet art cinema of the 1960s and 70s. She will focus on how this reception inflected conflicts between feminist critique and modernist ideals.

Sub Unit

• Cinema, Television, Electronic Media

Chair

• Olga Kim, Williams College

Roundtable Members

• Anne Eakin Moss, U of Chicago

• Olga Kim, Williams College

• Michael M. Kunichika, Amherst College

• Emma Widdis, U of Cambridge (UK)