CINEMA AND AVANT-GARDE ART

Avant-garde art wants to show and represent the life of the modern world(technology, speed, social movements, etc...). In music class, we have studied two different types of avant-garde art:

- Abstract art: The central trait of abstract art is that it does not portray realistic images
Composition VI

Composition VII

- Surrealistic art: The central trait of surrealistic art is that is wants to represent the dreams logic:

The Persistence of Memory

Cinema also was influenced  by avant-garde art. We have abstract and surrealist movies. In composition with painting, cinema offers us the movement.

Video of Walter Ruttmann: OPUS 1,2,3,4

Video of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali: Un perro andaluz

GEORGE MÉLIÈS

George Méliès was a famous illusionist and magician that worked in Paris. When he discovered the cinematograph, he thought  that it had many possibilities as a show.

Picture of Méliès:



















Méliès used a cinematograph to take magic tricks:
El hombre de las cabezas:

Méliès also filmed fantastic stories, with sets, actors and actresses, scripts, make-up and wordrobe. He imagined fantastic plots, like a trip to the moon:

Video: A trip to the moon:

Finally, he configured a new show conception with the cinematograph. Films had to be watched in a movie theatre with live music. A pianist or an orchestra played accompaniment music the images. For all these reasons. George Méliès is one of the greatest filmmakers in history.

THE CINEMATOGRAPH: CINEMA IS BORN

In 1895 the Lumiere Brothers invented the cinematograph. This machine can films or record images in motion.

THE LUMIERE BROTHERS


THE CINEMATOGRAPH:



What the Lumière Brothers film? They film quotidian activities in Paris, in 189. For example:

- A little boy eating
- Workers getting out of a factory
- Buliders destroying a wall
- Men playing cards

But a Lumière Brothers also filmed humorous gags. Like this:

Lumière Brothers' films are very short and limited( without color and sound). But they are very important because they were the pioneers of cinema. Besides, these images are historic documents that permit us to know the past. Cinema also works as a historic document.

THE RECORDING MUSIC

In 1877 Thomas Alva Edison  invented the phonograph.This machine can record the sound and the music .

EDISON AND PHONOGRAPH:

This fact was very important because with the recording, the music can be preserved.

There are different examples of early recorded music:

SOUSA FIRST RECORDING:

ENRICO CARUSO 1904:

After that, it was invented the gramophone, the machine that can reproduce the recorded music. Ancient gramophones were very big and they only could reproduce a few minutes of music.

gramophone

From then on, reproducer machines have developed a lot. Nowadays, music reproducers are smaller and they can reproduce hours pf music!!!!!

mp 4 reproducer