Thursday, 5 February 2026 at 7 pm
Carnal Odysseys of American Avant-Garde Cinema
Programme selectors: Diana Nenadić, Stipe Radić, Jelena Pašić
Pushing the boundaries of the cinematic medium, 1960s American avant-garde film explores visual and structural experimentation, highlighting the material foundations of cinema such as light and the texture of the film stock. This programme brings together works by key figures of American experimental film: Pola Chapelle, Bruce Conner, Carolee Schneemann, and Ed Emshwiller. Their films radically reinterpret the poetics of the body and the politics of representation in striking and unexpected ways. As Jonas Mekas, one of the founders of The New American Cinema Group, remarked: “We don’t want fake, polished, manicured films - we prefer rough, unpolished, but alive; we don’t want pink films: we want them the colour of blood.”
https://kinotuskanac.hr/movie/karnalne-odiseje-americkog-avangardnog-filma
A Matter of Baobab
Director: Pola Chapelle
US • 1970 • 3' • experimental • Avant-Garde
Conceived as a synthesis of different artistic media and forms, the film brings together a diverse cast that includes key figures of the American avant-garde, such as Jonas Mekas, Louis Brigante, and Storm de Hirsch.
Breakaway
Director: Bruce Conner
US • 1966 • 5' • Experimental • Avant-Garde
Bruce Conner’s film poem merges rhythmic editing, musical melody, bodily movement, and camera motion into a work that anticipates music videos. It’s a celebration of the kinetic potential of film. Filming pop star Toni Basil dancing, Conner’s camera moves around her in a continuous, flowing action. Varying frame rates, rapid flashes of light and dark, and dynamic editing transform the image into a phantom of itself. In the second half, everything is reversed: as the song plays in a warped, backward iteration, the film’s abstract mediation comes to the forefront.
Fuses
Director: Carolee Schneemann
US • 1967 • 25' • experimental • Avant-Garde
Driven by a desire to challenge formulaic depictions of sex and the female body on film, Carolee Schneemann created a radical erotic-feminist work in which she makes love to her then-partner, the composer James Tenney.
“No one else had explored the act of making love as the core of spontaneous gesture and movement. (…) Fuses was made as a tribute to a ten-year relationship and to the man with whom I lived and worked as an equal. (…) Perhaps because it was made by a woman from her own life, Fuses is both a sensual and a just exchange: neither lover is ‘subject’ nor ‘object.’”
Relativity
Directed by: Ed Emshwiller
US • 1966 • 38' • experimental • Avant-Garde
Man questions, measures, and observes relationships, people, places, objects, time, and himself - a sensual journey through a series of subjective reflections. "The artist's search for the meaning of his own existence is never-ending and takes many forms. Ed Emshwiller's remarkable epic Relativity continues this exploration with extraordinary frankness and rare technical skill”, wrote Willard Van Dyke about the film.
The screening is presented in collaboration with the Short Tuesday programme as part of the accompanying events for the exhibition “GEFF 63–69: From Anti-Film to the Black Wave.”
Admission is free.