Harmony and Disruption

The avant garde film movement was meant to confuse, yet inspire its audiences. Some films were merely paintings set in motion, a spectacle for the eye. Some were meant to put the audience in a ‘constant hallucination’ experiencing ‘temporary depersonalization’. This meant the audience was unaware that they were, for a moment, another entity entirely.

The avant garde filmmakers wanted to go against the grain and make something no one else wanted to. They wanted to be different and evoke a change in thought. Although each movement had similar goals, they fought against each other. The Surrealists were against the Dadaists, and so on. Some of the films seem like an inside joke to the filmmakers and his comrades, leaving the audience out on the punch line. For instance, Un Chien Andalou (1928) was a confusing film, but it was supposed to inspire those who watched it and show them what was wrong with the world.

Though these films are confusing, they showed us that film doesn’t have to be exactly like the lives we live. They can be something entirely different. They can allow us to escape the everyday world and be somewhere we only dreamed of. They inspire future filmmakers to think outside the box and to do something they believe in. Because they were confusing, they made the audience think, they made them question. They provoked harmony and disruption.

Word Study

Harmony

–noun, plural -nies.
1. agreement; accord; harmonious relations.
2. a consistent, orderly, or pleasing arrangement of parts; congruity.
3. Music.
a. any simultaneous combination of tones.
b. the simultaneous combination of tones, esp. when blended into chords pleasing to the ear; chordal structure, as distinguished from melody and rhythm.
c. the science of the structure, relations, and practical combination of chords.
4. an arrangement of the contents of the Gospels, either of all four or of the first three, designed to show their parallelism, mutual relations, and differences.
Origin:
1350–1400; ME armonye < MF < L harmonia < Gk harmonía joint, framework, agreement, harmony, akin to hárma chariot, harmós joint, ararískein to join together

Synonyms:
1. concord, unity, peace, amity, friendship. 2. consonance, conformity, correspondence, consistency. See symmetry. 3. Harmony, melody in music suggest a combination of sounds from voices or musical instruments. Harmony is the blending of simultaneous sounds of different pitch or quality, making chords: harmony in part singing; harmony between violins and horns. Melody is the rhythmical combination of successive sounds of various pitch, making up the tune or air: a tuneful melody to accompany cheerful words.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/harmony)