Melodías a través del océano: la intersección del documental y la vanguardia

• Autores: Malte Hagener
• Localización: Archivos de la filmoteca: revista de estudios históricos sobre la imagen, ISSN 0214-6606, Nº 56, 2007 (Ejemplar dedicado a: De la vanguardia al realismo: poéticas de pasaje; Carlos Serrano de Osma: la alternativa telúrica), págs. 46-69
• Idioma: español
• Títulos paralelos:
  • Melodies across the ocean: The documentary meets the Avant-garde
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen

  • My contribution deals with two very different, yet very similar, films: John Grierson’s Drifters (1929) and Walter Ruttmann’s Melodie der Welt (1929) which share more than their year of production. A comparison of these two films illustrates the deeply paradoxical nature of the Avant-garde. Both films use strategies developed within avant-garde circles while also drawing on other filmmaking traditions.

    Yet, both films need to be situated in a number of different contexts in order to fully understand their potential as well as their impact. These contextual factors demonstrate how a specific film form (the documentary) emerged from the fusion of certain stylistic features with an organisational model borrowed from the media strategies of the avant-garde, and was appropriated as part of a new support system in the service of the nation state.