DAMC HOSTS DISCOVERY: ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST CINEMA

A collaboration with the DAM Contemporaries and the UC Denver College of Arts and Media with Series curator and moderator, Howie Movshovitz, film critic and Director of Film Education at UCD's College of Arts and Media

At the Denver Art Museum Sharp Auditorium

Part 1: May 12, 2010; 7pm
During the 1940s and 1950s, an avant-garde emerged among American filmmakers who worked against traditional modes of narrative, production, distribution, and presentation. The films they produced-utilizing non-narrative structure, filmic abstraction, high-key color, and expressive cinematic textures and gestures-provide thought-provoking comparisons with American painters of this period. This program includes work by Maya Deren, Harry Smith, and Stan Brakhage, among others.

Part 2: June 10, 2010; 7pm
Within traditional commercial cinema of the 1950s, American filmmakers were also interested in the changing mores and values of the post-World War II era. While abstract expressionist painting was a reaction to World War II and an attempt to undermine the assumptions of American mass society, the lurid melodramas of such filmmakers as Douglas Sirk are also part of this milieu and spirit. The second evening in this series will present Sirk's 1955 masterpiece All that Heaven Allows as emblematic OF how Sirk and other mainstream filmmakers challenged conventions of movie-making.