Photographic Avant-Garde Cinema in the 1920s

During the 1910s and 1920s, photographers, painters, and visual artists turned to cinema to challenge Hollywood conventions and traditional artistic practices. Influenced by Dadaism, Constructivism, Futurism, and modernist abstraction, they sought to establish film as an autonomous art form based on movement, light, rhythm, composition, and visual experimentation rather than conventional storytelling.

Two important concepts emerged from these experiments: cinéma pur (pure cinema) and absolute film. Although closely related, pure cinema emphasized the distinctive expressive possibilities of the cinematic medium, while absolute film concentrated more specifically on abstract forms, geometric patterns, and nonrepresentational movement. Both approaches sought to create visual experiences comparable to musical compositions, using rhythm, repetition, contrast, and variation as their principal organizing elements.

CINÉMA PUR: The Autonomy of the Moving Image Pure cinema sought to free film from the conventions of literature and theater. Instead of relying on dialogue, characters, and narrative development, filmmakers explored the expressive potential of editing, unusual camera angles, changes in speed, optical distortions, superimpositions, and visual repetition. These techniques transformed familiar objects and everyday scenes into new sensory experiences. Important examples include René Clair's Entr'acte (1924), Man Ray's Emak-Bakia (1926), and Henri Chomette's Cinq minutes de cinéma pur (1926). These films demonstrate how discontinuous editing, visual associations, and experimental imagery could replace conventional narrative structures.

Man Ray, a major Dadaist and Surrealist artist, made a particularly distinctive contribution through Le Retour à la raison (Return to Reason, 1923). By exposing objects directly onto film stock, he transferred his camera-less photographic technique, known as rayography, into moving images. His experiments emphasized the material properties of film and the possibilities of chance, abstraction, and visual poetry.

ABSOLUTE FILM: Geometry, Abstraction, and Rhythm Absolute film developed through experiments in abstract painting, animation, and modernist design. Its practitioners treated the screen as an independent visual field in which shapes, lines, patterns, and movements could be organized into rhythmic compositions without depicting recognizable events. Hans Richter's Rhythmus 21 (early 1920s), Viking Eggeling's Symphonie diagonale (1924), and Walter Ruttmann's abstract Lichtspiel films are landmark examples. Their geometric forms expand, contract, intersect, and disappear in carefully structured sequences. These works demonstrate cinema's capacity to organize visual elements through time, much as music organizes sound. Fernand Léger's Ballet mécanique (1924), made with Dudley Murphy, similarly combines mechanical objects, human faces, geometric patterns, and repetitive movements. Through rapid editing and rhythmic juxtaposition, the film transforms everyday imagery into a dynamic composition that reflects the mechanical character of modern life.

CITY SYMPHONY: Photographic experimentation Photographic experimentation also influenced the development of urban documentary and the city symphony, a genre that portrayed the modern metropolis through rhythmic editing, architectural composition, and the observation of everyday activity. Rather than focusing on individual protagonists, these films treated the city itself as their central subject. Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler's Manhatta (1921), inspired by Walt Whitman's poetry, presents New York through images of skyscrapers, streets, ferries, and industrial structures. Its carefully composed shots transform the city into a geometric and poetic landscape. The film is an important early example of American avant-garde cinema and the city-symphony tradition. In Soviet visual culture, Alexander Rodchenko's radical photographic perspectives and Constructivist compositions helped redefine modern vision. His use of extreme angles, diagonal lines, and geometric forms challenged conventional ways of seeing and complemented the broader avant-garde interest in montage and visual dynamism. The city-symphony tradition reached major milestones with Alberto Cavalcanti's Rien que les heures (1926), Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), and Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929). These films combine urban observation with rhythmic editing, rapid montage, and unconventional camera techniques. Vertov's work is particularly notable for its self-reflexive exploration of filmmaking and its relationship to modern society.

KEY ARTISTS AND REPRESENTATIVE FILMS: MAN RAY (1890-1976) A leading Dadaist and Surrealist who experimented with camera-less imagery, photograms, optical distortions, and chance effects. Representative films: Return to Reason (1923), Emak-Bakia (1926), L'Étoile de mer (1928).

HANS RICHTER (1888-1976) A pioneer of abstract film who developed rhythmic compositions from geometric shapes and patterns. Representative films: Rhythmus 21 (1921), Rhythmus 23 (1923), Filmstudie (1926).

VIKING EGGELING (1880-1925) An early abstract-film pioneer who transformed his scroll drawings into animated compositions of lines, shapes, and rhythmic visual relationships. Representative film: Symphonie diagonale (1924). WALTER RUTTMANN (1887–1941) An important innovator in abstract animation who later applied rhythmic montage to documentary filmmaking and urban imagery. Representative works: Lichtspiel Opus I (1921), Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927).

HENRI CHOMETTE (1896-1941) A principal advocate of cinéma pur, exploring the sensory possibilities of light, movement, and cinematic form beyond conventional narrative. Representative film: Cinq minutes de cinéma pur (1926).

PAUL STRAND (1890–1976) and CHARLES SHEELER (1883–1965) Combined modernist photography, architectural composition, and poetic imagery in an influential portrait of New York City. Representative film: Manhatta (1921).

DZIGA VERTOV (1896-1954) Revolutionized documentary cinema through rapid montage, unusual camera angles, visual experimentation, and the self-reflexive presentation of filmmaking. Representative film: Man with a Movie Camera (1929).

OSKAR FISCHINGER (1900-1967) Developed abstract animation through geometric forms and rhythmic visual patterns, later becoming known for coordinating animated imagery with music. Representative works: early abstract animation experiments of the 1920s; his best-known musical visualizations followed in later decades.

ALBERTO CAVALCANTI (1897-1982) directed Rien que les heures (1926), an influential city-symphony film, showing a day in the life of Paris and its citizens. In the thirties he worked for the GPO Film Unit. (see the Free Cinema Documentary Film Movement)

LÁSZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY (1895-1946) - Between 1926 and 1932, Moholy-Nagy directed a trilogy of short films that explored urban landscapes and daily life through his distinct "New Vision" lens, capturing modern machinery, marginalized communities, and structural geometric patterns: Berliner Stilleben (1926-1931), Impressionen vom alten Marseiller Hafen (1929), Gross-Stadt Zigeuner (1932)