Montage
As an aesthetic principle, montage, defined as the assemblage of disparate elements into a composite whole often by way of juxtaposition, is most often associated…
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Montague, Charles Edward (1867–1928)
C.E. Montague was an Anglo-Irish commentator and drama critic for the Manchester Guardian (now the Guardian) from 1890, just after his graduation from the University…
Film Subject Overview
The Film Section includes entries on a variety of modernist genres, periods, movements, directors, films, and critical modes aligned with modernist aims and intellectual attitudes.…
Surrealism Overview
Soupault’s publication of Manifeste du Surréalism in 1924. Rising in the wake of the First World War, Surrealism revolted against a world that had become…
Dadaism
Dada began in Zurich, Switzerland, in the midst of World War I. Several expatriate artists converged in the city to escape the brutal and seemingly…
Kuleshov, Lev Vladimirovich (1899–1970)
Lev Kuleshov was a Soviet director and theorist who initiated the montage movement of the 1920s. He proclaimed editing to be the primary authorial act…
Ménilmontant (1925)
Ménilmontant is a 38-minute black and white avant-garde French film directed by Dimitri Kirsanoff. Its narrative develops solely through images and montage, without the support…
Borderline (1930)
An experimental production of an avant-garde collective of poets and artists known as the POOL group, Borderline is a key example of modernist montage techniques…
A Movie (1958)
A Movie (1958) is a twelve-minute compilation montage of vintage newsreels, soft-core “girlie movies,” low-budget Westerns, educational and ethnographic films, and other black and white…
Döblin, (Bruno) Alfred (1878-1957)
Alfred Döblin’s contributions to modern literature consist primarily of his montage style, epic narrative structures and critical eye toward contemporary culture. His masterpiece Berlin Alexanderplatz.…
Simultaneism (simultanéisme)
Neither a movement, nor a group of loosely connected artists, Simultaneism instead describes a tendency in modernist avant-garde art and literature from roughly 1912 through…
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Battleship Potemkin (dir. Sergei Eisenstein; Moscow: Goskino, 1925) is the only completed film of what was planned as a series commemorating the 1905 Russian revolution.…
Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (1927)
Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt [Berlin: Symphony of a City] is a film directed by Walther Ruttmann, co-written by Carl Mayer and Karl Freund, who…
Kim, Soo-yong (September 23, 1929--)
Trained as a filmmaker during the Korean War, Kim Soo-yong debuted in 1958 amid the South Korean film industry’s postwar recovery and became one of…
The Birth of a Nation
One of the most watched and debated American films in history, The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 silent film by D. W. Griffith…
Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947)
Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947) is an avant-garde film written, produced, and directed by the Surrealist painter and Dada film theorist Hans Richter. It…
October (1927)
October (Dir. Sergei Eisenstein and Grigorii Aleksandrov; Moscow: Sovkino, 1927) is a film about the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and the events leading to it. Due…
Pudovkin, Vsevolod Illarionovich (1893–1953)
Vsevolod Pudovkin was a Soviet actor, director, and film theorist working during the first half of the 20th century. He studied chemistry at Moscow State…
Ivens, Joris (1898–1989)
Joris Ivens (Georg Henri Anton Ivens), nicknamed “The Flying Dutchman” for his globe-trotting career, was a Dutch documentary maker. His political commitment and deft use…
Vogel, Debora (1900–1942)
Debora Vogel (1900–42) was a Polish-Jewish writer, poet, art critic, essayist, philosopher, and translator. She is a key – yet unrecognised – figure in the…
Horváth, Ödön von (Edmund Josef von Horváth) (1901–1938)
Born in Fiume to an aristocratic family, Horváth went to school in Budapest and Vienna and studied German literature and theatre in Munich. He left…
Ghatak, Ritwik Kumar (1925–76)
Ritwik Ghatak was an Indian Bengali filmmaker who, along with filmmakers like Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen, is known as one of the proponents of…
Gance, Abel (1889–1981)
Abel Gance, né Abel Perthon, was a French dramatist, actor, critic, poet, screenwriter, and director. Trying to make it as a playwright and actor from…
Griffith, David Wark (1875–1948)
American film director D.W. Griffith was a pivotal figure in cinema’s ascendance as a mass medium and modern art form. He is best known for…
Eisenstein, Sergei Mikhailovich (1898–1948)
Sergei Eisenstein was an early Soviet film director and theorist who produced widely acknowledged masterpieces of both silent and sound cinema, such as Strike (1924),…