Reading Response #3

Scott MacDonald’s Introduction to “Avant-Garde Film” is a brief synopsis of avant-garde cinema. He discusses avant-garde in the first half in regard to audience reaction, then gives a brief history on the formation on avant-garde cinema. Audiences almost universally dislike and are confounded by avant-garde upon their first viewing because avant-garde shatters our perceptions about what a film is. History shows that avant-garde receives much of its origins from the Lumière brothers and developed in many countries such as Russia, France, and Germany.
I chose to read this article because I am not very educated on avant-garde film. For all its weirdness, I find avant-garde strangely fascinating, possibly because I don’t understand it. My mind tends to thinks rather linearly and has always had an aversion to abstract arts. The main benefits from reading this article are learning some basic avant-garde film history. More importantly I learned to really give avant-garde a chance, if anything, to at least enjoy it for rebelling against the conventional Hollywood cinema.