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I wish to speak here of the avant-garde Cinema which, carrying theories to extremes, goes like a prospector to seek unknown treasures. The avantgarde Cinema has its errors and its discoveries. It is never indifferent. It is generally laughed at and, when some great classic film based upon avant-garde discoveries appears, the original is forgotten. But avant-garde Cinema opens up roads. For one thing it has its circuit of special theatres in the form of clubs. In England there is the Film Society; in France, The Federation of Cine Clubs; in Holland, The Film Liga; Spain has three cineclubs, Germany has seven.
France and Holland have in addition several regular cinemas showing avant-garde films. In Paris there are, the Vieux Colombier, the Studio des Ursulines, the Studio 28, the Studio de Paris, and the Agriculteurs and at Amsterdam there is the theatre opened by the Film-Liga. New York has also an avant-garde cinema and special shows are given in one of the theatres in Prague.
Avant-garde films have a special character; they are hooted or applauded. Those who have to do with them are despised by the great film industrials who admit of no experiments outside normal production.
A trial film is not necessarily good. Produced with small financial backing it is often less perfect technically than ordinary recreational films, but it always contains the principle of discovery and spiritual search which is well worthy of being encouraged and retained.
One can say that the avant-garde film made its appearance about 1916 and that since that time it has been in constant evolution. The majority of the public have regularly shied at these films when they have first appeared but then after several years they have seen these same films again and have judged them with an open mind, finally accepting them, liking them and considering them as milestones, marking ground covered. By these films the domain of cinematic expression has been enlarged, the commercial Cinema revived and renewed. One can also say that all those films which at the moment receive the applause of the entire public are inspired by cinematic discoveries made by madmen in sincere folly long ago outside of the regular curriculum of production and in defiance of opinion.
Would, for instance, that powerfully moving and dramatic film, World Melody, have been so consistently applauded in the ordinary circuit cinemas if it had not been for a handful of producers who during the last fifteen years have been putting their well considered theories into practice (theories which in the time of their birth were considered heretical and vain) by making films contrary to the trend of contemporary opinion and by finding support in the Cine-clubs. These old films which form the evolutionary history of the Cinema were boycotted by the trade because the public received them with hostility but nevertheless they contain the visual truth of today. Without them contemporary technique would be singularly poor. The Cinema, a new art, is transformed every day. But how much time
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