Pure cinema

Pure Cinema is the film theory and practice whereby movie makers attempt to create a more emotionally intense experience using autonomous film techniques, as opposed to using stories, characters, or actors.

Unlike nearly all other fare offered via celluloid, pure cinema rejects the link and the character traits of artistic predecessors such as literature or theatre. It declares cinema to be its own independent art form that should not borrow from any other. As such, "pure cinema" is made up of nonstory, noncharacter films that convey abstract emotional experiences through unique cinematic devices such as montage (the Kuleshov Effect), camera movement and camera angles, sound-visual relationships, super-impositions and other optical effects, and visual composition.

For the French avant-garde film movement of the 1920s and 30s, see Cinema pur.

Modern Pure Cinema Filmmakers and Writings

In 2010, the American abstract 16mm filmmaker Douglas Graves unveiled his website http://www.purecinema-celluloid.webs.com/ which contains his Pure Cinema lecture and other film writings, along with articles on abstract and cinematic filmmakers such as Slavko Vorkapich, Dziga Vertov, Ron Fricke, Arthur Lipsett, Leni Riefenstahl, Jordan Belson, George Lucas, Stan Brakhage, Geoffrey Jones, Bruce Conner, and movie title designers Saul Bass and Kyle Cooper.

Examples

• Dziga Vertov's The Man with the Movie Camera
• Ron Fricke's Baraka
• Arthur Lipsett's short 21-87
• Will Hindle's Chinese Firedrill, Watersmith, FFFTCM, Billabong
• Jean-Claude Labrecque's cinema verite 60 Cycles
• Scott Bartlett's Moon 1969, Medina, Serpent, Lovemaking, Heavy Metal
• Bruce Conner's A MOVIE
• Norman McLaren's Pas de Deux
• Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man, Co-mingled Containers, and most of his other work
• George Lucas's 6-18-67, Look At Life, 1:42:08, and Herbie
• Jordan Belson's Allures, Phenomena, and Fountain of Dreams
• Germaine Dulac's Disque 957, Cinegraphic Study of an Arabesque
• Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi Trilogy
• Geoffrey Jones' Locomotion, "Rail", "Snow"
• Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia and Triumph of the Will
• Ed Emshwiller's Thanatopsis, Relativity, Image, Flesh, and Voice, and Life Lines
• Jean Mitry's Pacific 231
• Andrew Noren's The Adventures of the Exquisite Corpse
• Ralph Steiner's H2O and Mechanical Principles
• Phil Solomon's Remains To Be Seen
• Jim Davis' Light Reflections, Figure and Shadows, and most of his other work
• John Whitney's Arabesque and Catalog
• José Antonio Sistiaga's ... era erera baleibu izik subua aruaren ...
• Bruce Baillie's Mass for the Dakota Sioux, Castro Street
• James Whitney's Lapis and Yantra
• Ian Hugo's Jazz of Lights
• Pat O'Neill (cinema)'s 7362, Saugus Series, Sidewinder's Delta, Foregrounds
• Slavko Vorkapich and John Hoffman's Moods of the Sea and Forest Murmurs

See also

• Abstract film
• Absolute Film
• Visual music
• Experimental film
• Cinematic techniques

References

• On True Cinema by Babac, Marko, 1997
• Film Technique by Pudovkin, Vsevolod
• Hitchcock/Truffaut
• George Lucas Interviews
• Filmic Expression by Novros, Les
• Germaine Dulac : 1882 - 1942 Ford, Charles Paris : avant-scene du Cinema, 1968, 48 p.
• Germaine Dulac IMDb bio, Yates, Daniel
• Abstract Films of the 1920 by Dr. Moritz, William(International Experimental Film Congress, 1989).
• Pure Cinema Celluloid http://www.purecinema-celluloid.webs.com/