Below is a list of significant events and films in underground film history between the years 1940 and 1949. Reference key of sources appears at the bottom of the page.
1940
MAJOR EVENTS
October: May Ray arrives in Los Angeles after driving cross country from NYC.
D.E.J.
Maya Deren goes on tour with professional dancer Katherine Dunham in hopes of writing a theoretical book on modern dance. However, that book was never written.
P.A.S.
SIGNIFICANT FILMS
ENGLAND
Len Lye
Musical Poster
S.R.
U.S.
Douglass Crockwell
Fantasmagoria series (1938-40)
D.C.
S.R. just lists Fantasmagoria I only — see 1938
Oskar Fischinger
An American March
for MGM; set to “Stars and Stripes” by John Philip Sousa
D.C.
S.R. lists as 1939
Dwinnel Grant
Themis
S.R.
1941
MAJOR EVENTS
May Ray has show at Frank Perls Gallery on Sunset Boulevard.
D.E.J.
Maya Deren arrives in Los Angeles with choreographer Katherine Dunham and her dance troupe whom she was working for as a publicity director.
D.E.J.
SIGNIFICANT FILMS
U.S.
Dwinnel Grant
Contrathemis
S.R.
Frances Lee
1941
S.R.
Christopher Young
Object Lesson
S.R.
1942
MAJOR EVENTS
Twin brothers George and Mike Kuchar are born in the Bronx.
J.S.
Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid marry.
P.A.S.
Salvador Dali publishes his first autobiography.
P.A.S.
SIGNIFICANT FILMS
U.S.
John Hoffman & Slavko Vorkapich
Moods of the Sea
D.E.J.
Mylon Meriam
unnamed abstract films (1941-42)
S.R.
1943
MAJOR EVENTS
October 15: Man Ray has a screening of his films at the American Contemporary Gallery.
D.E.J.
Surrealist cinema is revived in the U.S.
P.A.S.
SIGNIFICANT FILMS
FRANCE
Alexandre Alexeieff (with Clair Parker, his wife)
En Passant
D.C.
U.S.
Willard Maas
Geography of the Body
photography by Marie Menken
S.R.
D.C. credits film to Maas and Menken, too, but also credits as being made by the Gryphon Group and also partially involved Norman McLaren.
P.A.S. says film is made with Marie Menken and poet George Barker
Man Ray
Juliet
D.E.J. says “around 1943”
John and James Whitney
Variations (1941-43)
S.R.
D.C.
Film Exercise 1
S.R.
F.S. has a 1943 entry for the Whitneys listed as “First sound film”
1944
MAJOR EVENTS
After reediting documentaries for NYC’s Museum of Modern Art for a few years, Luis Bunuel is fired over his Communist affiliations. He returns to Los Angeles afterward.
D.E.J.
Salvador Dali visits Hollywood for a year where he creates the dream sequences for Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound.
P.A.S.
The book The Hollywood Hallucination by Parker Tyler is published.
D.E.J.
SIGNIFICANT FILMS
U.S.
Man Ray & Hans Richter
View
D.E.J. says scenario written by Man Ray and shot by Hans Richter
John and James Whitney
Film Exercise 2
Film Exercise 3
Film Exercise 4
Film Exercise 5
S.R.
F.S. has three entries for the Whitneys in 1944 — they’re listed as “Fragments,” “Fourth film” (four sections), and “Fifth film”
1945
MAJOR EVENTS
Maya Deren enters Meshes of the Afternoon into a competition hosted by the Amateur Cinema League and wins an Honorable Mention.
D.E.J.
Read Article
Man Ray has show at Julien Levy Gallery and a retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
D.E.J.
Curtis Harrington transfers to the USC film program after beginning his studies at Occidental College.
D.E.J.
SIGNIFICANT FILMS
U.S.
A Study in Choreography for Camera
S.R.; D.C.
F.S. lists as a collaboration with Talley Beatty
P.A.S. calls Beatty a “performer”
Dwinnel Grant
Three Dimensional Experiments
S.R.
Alexander Hammid
The Private Life of a Cat
S.M.
Visual Variations on Noguchi
1946
MAJOR EVENTS
Maya Deren publishes monograph An Anagram of Ideas on Art Form and Film (Bookshop Press).
D.C.
Maya Deren rents the Provincetown Playhouse on MacDougal Street, NY for a one-night show of her first 3 films. Repeat screenings were arranged immediately.
D.C.
Maya Deren is the first female recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation grant. She used the money to travel to Haiti to film dances and rituals.
P.A.S.
Sidney Peterson, James Broughton and two other people — one owned a small film company and the other had some money — gather in Peterson’s living room to discuss making their first film together. They would shoot The Potted Psalm over the summer, although the money guy abandoned the project and the film company guy just lent equipment.
P.A.S.
Jordan Belson graduates from the California School of Fine Arts.
P.A.S.
Man Ray marries Juliet Browner.
D.E.J.
Believing he’ll never have a chance to make another film, Luis Bunuel leaves Los Angeles for Mexico.
D.E.J.
Walt Disney asks Salvador Dali to create a six-minute animated segment for the compilation film Destino. Only a color test is shot before the whole project falls apart.
D.E.J.
Gregory Markopoulos enrolls in the USC film program where he lives across the hall from Curtis Harrington.
D.E.J.
SIGNIFICANT FILMS
U.S.
Douglass Crockwell
Glen Falls Sequence
S.R.
D.C.
Curtis Harrington
Fragment of Seeking
S.R.
P.A.S.
S.M.
D.C. also credits Camera Assistant as Gregory J. Markopoulos
D.E.J. notes Gregory Markopoulos “pushed the starter” on the camera
Hans Richter
Dreams That Money Can Buy
scenarios by: Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger and Man Ray
S.R.
D.C.
F.S. lists as 1944-46
1947
MAJOR EVENTS
April: A screening of the films of Maya Deren is held by the Experimental Film Society, a short-lived organization formed by Curtis Harrington and Kenneth Anger.
D.E.J.
Frank Stauffacher and Richard Foster begin the “Art in Cinema” series of film screenings. The first season was accompanied by an Art in Cinema book, which includes mentions of Mary Ellen Bute, Maya Deren, Dwinell Grant, Douglass Crockwell, Hans Richter, John and James Whitney, James Broughton, Sidney Peterson and Oskar Fischinger.
S.R.
D.C.
D.E.J. says Art in Cinema was launched in October of 1946
Anais Nin meets Curtis Harrington and Kenneth Anger, noting that the pair were “devoted to [Jean] Cocteau and Maya Deren.”
D.E.J.
SIGNIFICANT FILMS
U.S.
Sarah Arledge
Introspection
S.R.
Jordan Belson
Transmutation
S.R.
D.C.
P.A.S.
Douglass Crockwell
The Long Bodies (1946-47)
S.R.
D.C. doesn’t include “The” in the title
John Hoffman & Slavko Vorkapich
Forest Murmurs
D.E.J.
Robert Howard
Meta
S.R.
Francis Lee
Le Bijou
S.R.
Hal McCormick
Suite #2
S.R.
Norman McLaren
Fiddle-De-Dee
S.M.
Sidney Peterson
The Cage
S.R.
S.M.
D.C. credits “with Hy Hirsh”
P.A.S. credits Hy Hirsh as cameraman
Horror Dream
S.R.
D.C. credits “with Hy Hirsh”
Clinic of Stumble
S.R.
D.C. credits “with Hy Hirsh”
Joseph Vogel
House of Cards
S.R.
All the News
S.R.
1948
MAJOR EVENTS
Lewis Jacobs writes the essay “Experimental Cinema in America,” which is published in Hollywood Quarterly 3.2 and is the first substantial history of avant garde filmmaking in the U.S. The article also favorably mentions Kenneth Anger‘s film Escape Episode.
D.E.J.
Gregg Toland passes away.
D.E.J.
Man Ray has show at the new Copley Galleries in Beverly Hills.
D.E.J.
SIGNIFICANT FILMS
U.S.
Dorsey Alexander
Life and Death of a Sphere
S.R.
The Love That Whirls
intended to be feature-length — unfinished when laboratory destroyed “obscene” footage of Mexican rituals performed in the nude
P.A.S.
S.R. identifies lab as Kodak Laboratories and calls footage a “fake nude sacrifice”
Jordan Belson
Improvisations #1
S.R.
D.C.
James Davis
Light Reflections
S.R.
Painting and Plastics
S.R.
Shadows and Light Reflections
S.R.
D.C. lists film as Light Reflections and Shadows
Curtis Harrington
Picnic
S.R.
D.C.
P.A.S.
S.M.
D.E.J.
Hugo Latelin
Color Designs #1
S.R.
Francis Lee
The Idyl
S.R.
The Dead Ones
S.R.
D.E.J. says film is shot in early 1949, but that Markopoulos was forced to leave film at the lab until he could recover it in 1965
Lysis
S.R.
S.M.
Charmides
D.C. lists Lysis, Charmides and Psyche under one title: Du Sang de la Volupté et de la Mort
Sidney Myers
The Quiet One
S.R.
S.M. lists with Janice Loeb
Sidney Peterson
The Petrified Dog
S.R.
Frank Stauffacher
Sausilito
Zig Zag
S.R.
1949
MAJOR EVENTS
Robert Breer graduates in painting from Stanford.
S.R.
Ed Emshwiller graduates with a B.A. in Design from the University of Michigan.
S.R.
Brussels Experimental Film Festival is held.
D.C.
Curtis Harrington has an assessment of his mentor Josef von Sternberg, called “The Dangerous Compromise,” published in the Hollywood Quarterly. He claims the filmmaker is the biggest influence of the American experimental film scene.
D.E.J.
Creative Film Associates is a distribution company formed by Kenneth Anger and Curtis Harrington that offers for rental all of the films of the Los Angeles avant-garde: Films by Maya Deren, John Whitney, James Whitney, Anger and Harrington.
D.E.J.
SIGNIFICANT FILMS
FRANCE
Dimitri Kirsanov
Morte Moisson
D.C.
U.S.
Puce Moment
D.C.
D.E.J.
S.R. lists as 1948
P.A.S. says film is but a fragment from the unfinished Puce Women
Dorsey Alexander
Dime Store
S.R.
Oskar Fischinger
Motion Painting No. 1
S.R.
D.C.
Curtis Harrington
On the Edge
S.R.
D.C.
S.M.
D.E.J.
Sidney Peterson
Mr. Frenhofer and the Minotaur
S.R.
The Lead Shoes
S.R.
D.C.
P.A.S. notes that film was conceptualized and made with students in a summer Workshop 20 program
Roger Bruce Rogers
Toccata Manhatta
Round Trip in Modern Art
S.R.
Leonard Tregillus and R. W. Luce
Proem
S.R.
John and James Whitney
Five Abstract Film Exercises, Studies in Motion
D.C.
John Whitney
Mozart Rondo (1947-49)
Hot House (1947-49)
S.R.
REFERENCE KEY:
D.C: David Curtis. Experimental Cinema. New York: Dell Pub., 1978.
D.E.J.: David E. James. The Most Typical Avant-garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California, 2005.
F.S.: Frank Stauffacher. Art in cinema; a symposium on the avantgarde film. New York: Arno Press, 1968. (reprint from 1947)
J.S.: Jack Sargeant. Deathtripping: the Extreme Underground. Brooklyn: Soft Skull, 2008. (Originally published: London: Creation, 1995.)
P.A.S.: P. Adams Sitney. Visionary Film: the American Avant-garde, 1943-2000. New York: Oxford UP, 2002.
S.R.: Sheldon Renan. An Introduction to the American Underground Film. New York: Dutton, 1967.