Supporting these filmmakers, at least in the early 1930s, was a network of exhibition outlets, including art theaters, galleries, and amateur film clubs, as well as film publications, all of which constituted an avant-garde movement.
The historical reception of the first American avant-garde is usually characterized by the judgment that it was essentially European in outlook and derivative of 1920s European models, aping expressionism, following the style of the construetivist documentaries, and filming American versions of European avant-garde ideas.2 In fact, it was the reception of German expressionist films, like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, and Soviet revolutionary narratives, like BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, in the mid 1920s that spurred American filmmakers to attempt the production of experimental films. In these American films, as well as in the European avant-garde films trickling over to the United States, film lovers perceived a clear alternative to the generic conventions of Hollywood. A crucial difference to understanding the dynamics of the 1920s and 1930s avant-garde in relation to its post-World War II American experimental film successors involves the self-images and material conditions of the two generations .
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