Page 19 - Studio International - November December 1975

THE TWO AVANT-GARDES

Peter Wollen

Film history has developed unevenly, so that in Europe To understand further the split which has developed
today there are two distinct avant-gardes. The first can be within the avant-garde it is necessary to go back into
identified loosely with the Co-op movement and includes history. A similar split can be seen in the twenties. On the
most of the film-makers written about in this number of one hand films were being made by Léger- Murphy,
Studio International. The second would include film-
makers such as Godard, Straub and Huillet, Hanoun,
Jancso. Naturally there are points of contact between
these two groups and common characteristics, but they
also differ quite sharply in many respects : aesthetic
assumptions, institutional framework, type of financial
support, type of critical backing, historical and cultural
origin. There are other film-makers too who do not fit
neatly into either camp, and films which fall somewhere
in between or simply somewhere else —Jackie Raynal's
Deux Fois, for instance— but in general the distinction
holds good.
At the extreme, each would tend to deny the others the
status of avant-garde at all. Books like Steve Dwoskin's
Film /s or David Curtis's Experimental Film' do not
discuss the crucial post-1968 work of Godard and Gorin,
for example. And supporters of Godard —and Godard
himself— have often denounced the 'Co-op avant-garde'
as hopelessly involved with the established bourgeois art
world and its values. The reasons for dismissal are often
quite beside the point and misplaced. By no means all
the directors (to use a word taboo in the other camp) in
one group work with narrative in 35mm, as you might
sometimes imagine—Godard has worked in 16mm for
years and recently with video (to open up another
hornet's nest). Conversely, many Co-op film-makers are
well aware of political issues and see themselves in some
sense as militant. (Not that political militancy in itself is
any guarantee of being avant-garde).
The position is complicated too by the fact that in
North America there is only one avant-garde, centred on
the various Co-ops. There are no obvious equivalents of
Godard or Straub- Huillet, although their influence can
occasionally be seen — in Jon Jost's Speaking Directly
for example. Moreover, American critics and theorists of
the avant-garde have long tended to overlook their
European counterparts or see them as derivative. The
Europeans— and perhaps particularly the English —then
tend to react by stressing their own credentials, making
claims to have occupied the same ground as the
Americans earlier or independently. From outside, the
quarrel often looks of secondary importance. After all,
no-one denies that the capital of narrative fiction 35mm
film-making is Hollywood, however innovative European
directors such as Antonioni or Fellini or Truffaut may be.
In the same way, New York is clearly the capital of the
Co-op movement. Consequently, from New York, Godard
looks much more distinctively European than Kren or
Le Grice, a fact which simply reflects the realities of power
in the art world, to which the Co-op movement is closely
tied. Indeed, there is a sense in which avant-garde Co-op
film-making in Europe is closer to New York than
Californian film-making is, and the leading New York
critics and tastemakers — Sitney, Michelson, etc. —are not
appreciated in San Francisco any more than they are in
London.
It seems to me much more important to try and
understand what unites and separates Godard and
Straub-Huillet on the one hand, and, say, Gidal and
Wyborny on the other hand, than what unites and
separates Europe and North America within the Co-op
ambit. Moreover, I think the absence of any avant-garde
of the Godard type in North America will ultimately prove
a severe limitation on the development of the New
American Cinema itself, narrowing its horizons and tying
it unnecessarily closely to the future of the other visual
arts, condemning it to a secondary status within the art
world. Close relationship with 'art' — painting, post-
painting, etc. — is both a strength and a weakness. Four frames from Leger- Murphy's Ballet Mecanique 1924
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