American Avant Garde

The french word, "avant garde", when translated into english, means advanced guard. Watching the works of Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren, it's easy to see why they would be considered the vanguards of american film experimentation. "Mothlight", Brakhage's most well-known piece, is a fantastic example of outside-the-box thinking. At first it's off-putting to watch a film with no clear cut meaning or story behind it, but on repeated viewings, I began to gain an understanding of his works. I watched several of his other films, and saw that they all used methods that, to my knowledge, no one else had used. Rather than using the film as a canvas on which to record footage, he used the film AS the art itself. To a mainstream audience, his influence may not be blatant or obvious. But, I have a feeling that he inspired many filmmakers to spread out to more artistic viewpoints.

It is worth mentioning, as a side note, that two of his students were Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who went on to make "South Park". If you look at the earliest seasons of south park, you'd realize that they are layers of paper that they filmed. While not entirely original, you can see the very slight influence of Brakhage on this technique, as it does go out of the norm for what animation standards were at the time.