The Smiling Madame Beudet made in 1922 is generally regarded by scholars and theorists as history's premier "feminist film".
Germaine Dulac (wiki) was a central figure in 1920's French avant-garde cinema, and its only woman director. A filmmaker with her own production company who worked in narrative, avant-garde, and documentary genres, Dulac was also an active feminist, critic, and a prolific writer who wrote some of the earliest treatises on avant-garde film.
Later she made what was considerered one of the first surrealist films: The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928) from an original scenario by Antonin Artaud who later denounced it.
This resulted in a letter to La Nouvelle Revue Française, because the journal had omitted to mention her as the “author” stating that the intellectuals and the filmmakers should develop a closer kinship to one another, for it is only nuances between words that irremediably keep them apart.
posted by adamvasco on May 11, 2012 - 4 comments

Brought to you by Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturers Sandoz, Eric Duvivier’s La Femme 100 Têtes (1967, rated NSFW) is a free cinematic adaptation of Max Ernst’s collage-novel of the same name. Via { feuilleton }.
posted by misteraitch on Jan 16, 2012 - 11 comments

in 1976, surrealist icon Salvador Dali starred and directed in the fake documentary/travelogue Impressions de la haute Mongolie - Impressions of Upper Mongolia - about his quest to find a rare hallucinogenic mushroom. It was intended as a tribute to the late Raymond Roussel. It is available on Youtube in 5 parts. 1 - 2 -3 - 4 - 5 (70 min)
posted by The Whelk on Sep 3, 2011 - 25 comments

The most effective Surreality is that which is entirely Unintentional (15-minute Google video). A delightful balance between amusing & disturbing. Harvested from Doctor Macro's MGM Shorts page. Previously.
posted by squalor on Apr 1, 2007 - 19 comments

Toshio Matsumoto's (J) first film (E), Ginrin (or "Silver Ring"), once believed lost has been found! Ginrin was an English Language, "relatively avant garde" PR film that had perhaps the first use of Musique Concrete in a Japanese film -- in this case, the first score by Toru Takemitsu. The film was discovered to be lost (as a result of the firm it was made for going under) in the 1980s when it was desired for a retrospective on the 1950's Japanese Avant-Garde at the Pompidou Center. [More Inside]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me on Sep 11, 2005 - 4 comments