Light Cone

The Lago Film Fest (Italy) has invited Emmanuel Lefrant to show a selection of films from the Light Cone collection. On this occasion, he will present the program "A Way of Seeing: Avant-garde and Documentary Cinema".

In the 1920s, Surrealist artists who had turned to filmmaking (Duchamp, Léger, Man Ray, etc.) were interested not only in the technical possibilities of the new medium, but also in its ability to defy or even control time. Some of them were fascinated by scientific questions, as demonstrated by the work of Jean Painlevé as early as 1928 with his observations of the underwater world (such as La Pieuvre, 1928, or Les Oursins, 1929). These new visions of the world were reflected in their artistic explorations.

Since L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de La Ciotat (1896), cinema had taken two seemingly distinct paths: one inherited from a Benjaminian vision of cinema as an heir to photography, that supplants painting by the force of its realism (commonly known as "documentary cinema"), and the other inherited from literature and particularly the novel, giving rise to narrative cinema. But, the artistic influence of Dadaism, Constructivism, Surrealism, and, later, the emergence of American modernist photography opened a new path – that of the avant-gardes, where observation of reality would blend with various formal strategies, creating a world of augmented, fantastical, deformed reality, more apt to convey dreamlike or phantasmagorical universes dear to these artistic movements. Thus, the avant-gardes took over this vision of reality, adding a dose of subjectivity, poetry, and dreams, and set about inventing a cinematographic language filled with special effects and tricks.

This program explores the complex relationships between a new art form and the influences that marked its development, from pioneering works (Dr Doyen, Eugène Deslaw, László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Schuitema) to the post-war chapter with the advent of a certain branch of American avant-garde cinema (Helen Levitt, D.A. Pennebaker, Robert Breer, Chick Strand).

"A WAY OF SEEING" : AVANT-GARDE ET CINÉMA DOCUMENTAIRE

Friday July 25, 2025, 22:45

	SÉPARATION DES SŒURS SIAMOISES by Dr Eugène DOYEN 1902 / DCP / b&w / silent / 5' 00
	INFLATION by Hans RICHTER 1928 / DCP / b&w / silent / 3' 00
	MONTPARNASSE by Eugène DESLAW 1929 / DCP / b&w / sound / 15' 00
	MARSEILLE VIEUX PORT *Impressionen vom alten Marseille Hafen* by László MOHOLY-NAGY 1929 / DCP / b&w / silent / 9' 00
	DE MAASBRUGGEN by Paul SCHUITEMA 1937 / DCP / tinted b&w / sound / 14' 00
	IN THE STREET by James AGEE & Helen LEVITT & Janice LOEB 1948 / DCP / b&w / sound / 16' 00
	DAYBREAK EXPRESS by D.A. PENNEBAKER 1953 / DCP / color / sound / 5' 00
	HOMAGE TO JEAN TINGUELY'S HOMAGE TO NEW YORK by Robert BREER 1960 / DCP / b&w / sound / 9' 00
	GUACAMOLE by Chick STRAND 1976 / DCP / color / sound / 10' 15