Moving Forward, Looking Back : The European Avant-garde and the Invention of Film Culture, 1919-1939

Abstract

Introduction: avant-garde culture and technological transformations -- Reframing the historical avant-garde -- media, historiography and method -- The dialectics of self-conception -- film avant-garde and industry around 1930 -- Strategic convergence and functional differentiation -- the film societies and ciné-clubs of the 1920s and 30s -- Mapping a totality of networks, nodes and flows -- discourses as practice -- Vanishing point Soviet Union -- Soviet cinema and the West between innovation and repression -- Melodies across the oceans -- the intersection of documentary and avant-garde -- Conclusion -- bridging the gaps, connecting the dots.