Resumen de Melodías a través del océano: la intersección del documental y la vanguardia
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.
