Back and Forth: Early Cinema and the Avant-Garde

Back and Forth: Early Cinema and the Avant-Garde focuses on two areas of cinema—the first phases of cinematic production and the tradition of avant-garde films that resurrect early films by incorporating or reworking them. The impetus for the catalogue and film series Back and Forth: Early Cinema and the Avant-Garde grew out of an exhibition entitled The Avant-Garde and Primitive Cinema prepared in 1985 by Bart Testa with Charlie Keil for the Funnel, in Toronto. In the seven-year peiod between the two exhibitions, a massive scholarly and curatorial reappraisal of the subject has taken place in the form of specialist conferences, journal articles and the publication of numerous books. As a result of this activity, new film prints of the very early material have been struck and archival work has become much more active. This film material, often fascinating and sometimes beautiful, is critical to understanding the genesis of the art of film. While the earlier series at the Funnel took a cursory look at this subject, the great quantity of new material that has since been made available presents the opportunity for a much more thorough and interesting investigation of this topic.

The curious and important relationship between avant-garde filmmaking and the reassessment of early cinema is explored both in this catalogue and in the film series held at the Art Gallery of Ontario in the spring of 1992.

—from the preface by Cathy Jonasson, Curator, Film, Art Gallery of Ontario