Image-Sound Relations in Avant-Garde Film

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The rise of the talking pictures at the end of the 1920s was not universally praised; it also met with bitter resistance, especially from proponents of the historical avant-garde. The anti-naturalist use of sound proposed by the proponents of Russian montage cinema with their counterpoint model is simply one of many possibilities for challenging the reality effect of synchronized sound. For a more precise look at the relationship of image and sound in avant-garde film, it is necessary to break down the common division of film history into silent film vs. sound film. American film theorist Fred Camper suggests a convincing three-part division in this regard. As the screenings of silent films were not silent, that is, without sound, thus Camper identifies the prevalent practice until the end of the 1920s (but not limited to this time period) as (1) “silent-with-sound-film.” On the contrary, it is only possible to speak of “true” sound film when synchronization is provided through the direct coupling of image and sound (Vitaphone or sound-on-film). According to Camper, it is paradoxically these (2) “‘true’ sound films” that first created the necessary conditions for the third category, the (3) “’true’ silent film”. My attempt at a typology of image-sound relations in avant-garde film follows Camper’s provocative distinction. I will refrain from drawing up a chronological depiction and instead focus on shifts in the respective technical processes. Similarities between apparently different processes will thus be made visible, while allowing the discovery of relations between even temporally distant sound practices. Filmic examples include: German abstract films, Dadaist films, Ken Jacobs, Len Lye, Mary Ellen Bute, Dimitri Kirsanoff, Peter Tscherkassky, Norman McLaren, Kurt Kren, David Gatten, Guy Debord, Peter Kubelka.

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International Film Studies Spring School

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