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A (Very Brief) History of Experimental Cinema

The world of experimental or avant-garde (vanguard) cinema has a history just as rich as narrative film (it could be said that the two run on parallel tracks). While usually associated with European filmmakers, America has its own rich tradition of avant-garde and experimental filmmakers. Very loosely defined as any film that doesn't use narrative cinematic technique to achieve its goals, the avant-garde is worthy of study for any filmmaker or student of film. The Dissolve recently featured two experimental avant-garde shorts -- one by the filmmaker who made the amazing credits for  Enter The Void .  Click below to learn more about the history of the wonderfully strange world of avant-garde and experimental cinema, and watch some of its classics.

The credit sequence for Gaspar Noé's 2009, mind-bending epic  Enter The Void  was singled out by Quentin Tarantino as, "Hands down best credit scene of the year -- Maybe best credit scene of the decade. One of the greatest in cinema history." Q.T. is arguably given to hyperbole, but it's almost impossible to watch these credits and not be affected. If nothing else, they demonstrate how a credit sequence can stand alone as art (just like the classic works of Saul Bass ). NOTE: These are a slightly truncated version of the credits, the full version is not available for embedding, but you can watch them  here :

The man behind these credits is German experimental filmmaker  Thorsten Fleisch , whose work explores the medium of film in beautifully non-traditional, non-narrative ways. His 2007 short film  Energie!  is no exception:

Fleisch transformed his fascination with tesla coils into -- animated artwork, exposing photographic paper to high voltage and then arranging these “electrophotographies” into a kind of flipbook. A tinkerer by nature, Fleisch uses "Energie!” to show how awe-inspiring raw electricity can be, and how impressive the  manipulation  of those forces can be. It’s an experiment about experimenting.

That may sound abstract, but just watch and see for yourself:

Of his working methods, Fleisch says, "I normally don’t know where it will lead me in the end. I just try to find what I think looks interesting and beautiful." The film won multiple awards at film festivals and is a wonderful example of film as art for art's sake. Fleisch created the work by exposing photo paper to electricity and then making a sort of flip book. The film is almost a science experiment, but it's also art, and is a way for him to explore electricity in a tangible, visual way. The film finds beauty in something ordinarily hidden.

A Little Context:

Today it seems easy to look back and see how film's development into a narrative art was a foregone conclusion, but when motion picture technology was invented in the late 19th century, there was (just like with the internet twenty years ago) a sense of limitless possibilities. Without an established cinematic grammar, most early films were just one shot, like those of the The Lumières brothers, whose "actualities" were recordings of real events, with no narrative:

There is an urban legend that when audiences first saw  Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat , many fled the theatre, thinking the train was coming right at them. Whether true or not, it's a certainty that early motion picture audiences were disoriented by the new images they saw (remember, photography was still in its comparative infancy at this time, so  moving pictures must have been almost too much for the Victorian mind to process.)

The film grammar we know today was developed and codified in the 20th century by directors like D.W. Griffith in the U.S. and Sergei Eisenstein  in the Soviet Union (along with countless others); Eisenstein's development of  montage theory  established new uses for editing (Soviet films from the 1920s have thousands of cuts, while American films of the same period have hundreds). Montage theory was Marxist and ideological, but its implications were far-reaching and his editing techniques were quickly absorbed into the language of film. Eisenstein established the idea that two juxtaposed shots create a new meaning. If a person is looking at something offscreen, and then we cut to something, an assumption is made that the person was looking at that object.

The Kuleshov Effect, named after Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, demonstrated that an audience would create a meaning based solely on editing. Audiences were shown a film consisting of a shot of an expressionless man (Ivan Mosjoukine, a popular Soviet actor) intercut with different images. Though his face was completely neutral, it was interpreted by audiences to be reacting to the different images he was "looking" at:

Enter The Avant-Garde

With this grammar of narrative film established (shot, reverse shot, P.O.V., etc.), self-consciously avant-garde cinema came out of a ravaged post-WWI Europe in the 1920s to turn it on its head; visual artists and writers set out to ridicule conventional notions of plot, character, and setting, which they saw as bourgeois and limiting (narrative film purports to be a rendering of life in time, and these artists wanted to point out how artificial this imitation was, as well as challenge the idea that there was one way to make films, and tweak the nose of the middle-class values of most narrative films).

The Cinéma Pur  (Pure Cinema) movement aimed for films focused entirely on movement, rhythm, and composition, with no focus on narrative. Influential filmmakers included visual artists  Marcel Duchamp  and photographer  Man Ray , whose 1926 film  Emak-Bakia  (Leave Me Alone) is a superb example:

An American example of  Cinéma Pur  can be found in the other short from The Dissolve, Mechanical Principles  (1930), by the photographer  Ralph Steiner . The film is a "study of machines in motion, cut to the rhythm of the machines themselves." Steiner made many industrial films, but for this piece he cut out the final product and instead concentrated on the images of the machines themselves; removed from context, they take on their own beauty:

Other avant-garde filmmakers were inspired by Freudian notions of the unconscious. One of the most famous,  Un Chien Andalou  (1929),   was made by Spanish filmmaker  Luis Buñuel  and artist  Salvador Dalí , and is an example of the  Surrealist  school. Inspired by dreams the two had, the film  is a 'surreal' mix of images, purposely designed so that, according to Buñuel, "No idea or image [might] lend itself to a rational explanation...Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything." It is a pure feast for the eyes, and arguably one of the most influential films ever made:

In 1961, French filmmaker Alain Resnais'  Last Year at Marienbad  commented on much experimental film that had come before, using editing to create uncertainty about causal relations between events as well as the continuity of time and space. It was unique among experimental films for being a cultural event, an avant-garde film that was seen by a large audience. Even today, the film is still controversial and viewers continue to puzzle over Resnais' maze:

The avant-garde affected many of the so-called "film school generation" directors who were trained at Universities in the 1960s. As a student at USC, George Lucas saw, and was influenced by, many classic experimental films, and was particularly enthralled by Canadian filmmaker Arthur Lipsett's 1964 short  21-87: 

His work at USC reflects his fascination with experimental cinema, as can be seen in this 1966 student short,  Freiheit: 

And David Lynch, who has always kept one foot firmly planted in experimental cinema, started by making experimental shorts:

Most of the classic avant-garde films were not widely seen (remember, until recently there was no YouTube, or even home video, and anyone wanting to see these pieces had to seek out rare prints, or attend film schools that kept copies for study). Nevertheless, they were tremendously influential on narrative film and their stamp can be seen in modern cinematography, editing, visual effects, and aesthetics. Music videos contain some of the prime examples of avant-garde and experimental film techniques, and whether they are aware of it or not, all filmmakers are using ideas and techniques that come from the avant-garde.

I've tried to cover a few of the touchstones of the movement, as well as provide a little context, but there were many, many schools and countless practitioners of avant-garde and experimental cinema ( far too many to name here ), and any filmmaker would be well-served by a thorough study of the subject -- just as much they would by studying classic Hollywood films. Many of the classics of the genre are available online, as well as scholarly essays and analysis far more erudite than I've provided.

What do you think? Are you a fan of experimental/avant-garde filmmaking? Who are some of your favorite filmmakers, and what are your favorite movies that were left off this list? What lessons do you think an indie filmmaker in 2013 could learn from a 1920s' French surrealist? Let us know in the comments!

Link: Art Meets Science and Industry in this Week’s Shorts -- The Dissolve

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Editing India’s Official Entry for the 2025 Oscars with Adobe Premiere Pro: Spotlight on “Laapataa Ladies”

"laapataa ladies” is an indian hindi-language comedy drama, directed by kiran rao, that follows the misadventures of two young newly-wed brides who, due to their identical marital veils, are accidentally swapped during a cross-country train ride to their respective in-laws..

Released theatrically in March 2024, “Laapataa Ladies” (translation: Lost Ladies) was praised for its story, screenplay, and cast performances, winning Best Film (Critics' Choice) at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne and being selected as the Indian entry for the Best International Feature category of the 2025 Oscars.

We spoke to the film’s editor, Jabeen Merchant, about how she used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the movie — currently streaming on Netflix — and organize the many hours of footage that was shot for it. Trained at the Film & Television Institute of India and based in Mumbai, Merchant is known for her wide experience in the Indian film and TV industry covering more than 25 years. Her work spans mainstream Bollywood, art house cinema, television, web shows, short fiction, and documentary films.

From working with superior industry-grade cameras and external storage devices to enhancing collaboration as well as the review and approval process with other Adobe apps — “ Laapataa Ladies” demonstrates how the Adobe video ecosystem surrounding Premiere Pro can empower authentic storytelling and accelerate video editing workflows globally.

How did you begin your journey into video editing?

I'm from the generation of editors who were trained on 35 mm film and videotape. But when I left film school and began work, the first computer-based editing systems arrived in India, in Mumbai at least. I worked on a number of different systems and at one point, like a lot of other editors, I made the switch to Premiere Pro, because I found it was very well suited to the method of work that I have developed over the years. I’ve now used it to edit a number of feature films, fictional series, and documentaries.

What’s your video editing workflow like?

This is the method I normally adopt when I'm editing: I begin by making assemblies. I sort clips by scenes or topics and sync up the sound and the multiple cameras. Then I line them up without cutting anything at all yet, without cutting a frame. I call these my assembly sequences and they become my go-to-space for each scene as I work on it.

There I can view all the footage and discuss it with the director if necessary. Then I do a sequence-to-sequence edit where I mark the selected portions I want and move them to a fresh timeline, and from there I start to build the actual scenes.

My timeline almost never has multiple video layers. Unless I'm actually compositing the layers, I don't leave extra clips lying about. I just keep what's needed and prefer to create more edit versions if there are alternative choices. I manipulate clips and use copy & paste to move things from one sequence to another, and the razor tool to delete unwanted parts.

I also work with audio right from the start. Soundtrack laying and mixing is my thing: I change the audio levels, mute certain tracks, and add basic sound effects if required. I like to build everything together as I work and that’s so easy to do with Premiere Pro.

The assembly timelines that Jabeen created for “Laapataa Ladies"

What was your workflow like for “ Laapataa Ladies” specifically?

I took over the project from another editor at a very early stage in the process. The entire film was shot and they had done an on-location edit already. Because I had to start from scratch and it was a very large project in terms of the footage, I decided to switch to Premiere Pro to be able to do my best work.

Some scenes were very long and complex, with hours of footage, multiple characters, camera angles , and takes. There was a lot of material, and an assistant had to manually re-sync some of the sound, which took up extra time, but otherwise the transition to Premiere Pro was very easy. We spent a couple of weeks figuring it out through trial and error, for example whether an XML or an EDL would work better or a combination of both.

My sequence-to-sequence editing method came in very useful, and the director — Kiran Rao — was also very involved. She was happy to roll up her sleeves and patiently work with me through the footage, which not many directors like doing. It was incredible to be able to collaborate like that with Kiran and having multiple timelines allowed the work to happen very smoothly.

What Premiere Pro features do you find most useful when you’re editing a film or series?

I use graphics templates a lot. The way I can import stock footage by using Adobe Creative Cloud is very useful, too. Being able to quickly create little graphic elements is great, and I also love the way I can work with titling and adding text. It’s very fast.

I also very much enjoy creating my own subtitles and use Speech to Text to automatically generate captions. That’s just so easy compared to other software. I can practically do it on the fly. I'm currently editing a documentary film, which we need to transcribe hours of interviews in English for, and I found the captions generated with Speech to Text are about 90 percent accurate — even with Indian-accented English. It really cuts down on the time spent working on the sequences and doesn’t break the workflow at all.

Another thing that I really like about Premiere Pro, which sets it apart from other editing software that I have used, is the ease with which it allows me to import media in a variety of formats. And then to export finished edits, reference clips, captions, and even markers once I'm done. In terms of speed and quality, I haven't come across anything else as good as this. For “ Laapataa Ladies”, we had literally hundreds of preview screenings at different stages of the editing process. My team and I never had any big problems, even though the project files grew more and more complicated.

How do you collaborate with other team members?

Sometimes I work with several people in different cities and then use Team Projects to edit collaboratively in Premiere Pro. I have also used Frame.io for the reviews and approval process on a number of projects, which is also really good for remote collaboration as it seamlessly links up with Premiere Pro too.

However, we tend to choose not to put the footage in the cloud and work with cloned hard drives with the same file path because in India you never know when your internet will crash. It makes us feel more secure so we won’t be stuck when it does happen.

“ Laapataa Ladies” is aimed at women and made by women. How important was the female perspective?

With “ Laapataa Ladies”, we were able to bring that woman's gaze to the telling of the story. Stories can be told in many different ways. We had so much footage to play with, and the first cut was close to three hours long. There's a lot that changed and got restructured, added and removed. Many decisions were taken, and it was a process of many months, a very collaborative process. But in the end, this is firmly a woman's way of looking at the world.

What’s your one piece of advice for any editors trying to break into the industry, particularly women?

Of all the different branches of filmmaking, editing possibly has the most room for women. Some of the best editors are women, and I’ve always had Indian women editors as role models. Renu Saluja has inspired all of us, for example, and in Mumbai there is a large community of women editors right now.

If you are starting out as an editor, remember there are no shortcuts. If you don't do things the right way from the start, you'll just end up spending more time and getting into trouble later on, so it's worth doing that hard work at the beginning. Get your thoughts in a row before you start cutting anything. Watch your footage and understand what you’re doing, then organize it.

Try the latest video-editing features by updating your Premiere Pro app today. And just announced at Adobe MAX, experiment with the all new Generative Extend in Premiere Pro (beta) powered by the Firefly Video Model in the Premiere Pro beta app accessible through the Creative Cloud Desktop app. To enhance your workflow even further, explore the many integrations that are available as part of the Adobe Video ecosystem .

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