Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film

  • March 7, 2015 / 17:00
  • March 8, 2015 / 16:00

Director: Pip Chodorov
Cast: Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, Pip Chodorov
France, 82’, 2012, color

French , English with Turkish subtitles

This feature-length documentary provides a vivid, eye-opening, and appropriately personal introduction to one of the most important, yet perpetually marginalized, realms of filmmaking: avant-garde cinema. Achieving the near-impossible task of doing justice in a mere 82 minutes to this incredibly rich, varied, and expansive domain, Free Radicals is as expertly constructed an introduction to the topic as one could hope for, thanks in large part to the film's privileging of rare interviews with some of the most important filmmakers in the avant-garde tradition (including Jonas Mekas, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Hans Richter), and its inclusion of several films in their entirety. The film's sincere admiration for its subject is best reflected by Chodorov's own description: "I wanted to share a few of the films I love and introduce you to some of the free, radical artists who made them."

Contempt

Contempt

Bardot, la Méprise

Bardot, la Méprise

Inferno

Inferno

Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film

Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film

Beaches of Agnès

Beaches of Agnès

A Trip to the Moon

A Trip to the Moon

The Extraordinary Voyage

The Extraordinary Voyage

Room 237

Room 237

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

The Pervert's Guide To Cinema

The Pervert's Guide To Cinema

Be Kind Rewind

Be Kind Rewind

Trailer

Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film

Soothsayer Serenades I Beautiful People by Sarp Dakni

Soothsayer Serenades I Beautiful People by Sarp Dakni

Today we are thrilled to present the second playlist of Amrita Hepi’s Soothsayer Serenades series as part of the Notes for Tomorrow exhibition. 

The Search for Form

The Search for Form

A series of small and rather similar nudes Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu and Eren Eyüboğlu produced in the early 1930s almost resemble a ‘visual conversation’ that focus on a pictorial search. It is also possible to find the visual reflections of this earlier search in the synthesis Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu reached with his stylistic abstractions in the 1950s.

Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel

Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel

In 1998 Ben Jakober and Yannick Vu collaborated on an obvious remake of Marcel Duchamp’s Roue de Bicyclette, his first “readymade” object. Duchamp combined a bicycle wheel, a fork and a stool to create a machine which served no purpose, subverting accepted norms of art.