21-87Star Wars
Where the Force came from
Lucas watched 21-87 over and over as a film student. He has tied the Force to a line spoken in it, and its number turns up in Star Wars.
Collage film
Films that cut unrelated images and sounds together, so meaning comes from the collisions between them.
Collage film borrows the cut-and-paste of Cubist and Dada collage. Its makers gather fragments, often found and sometimes their own, and arrange them so each image comments on the next and the soundtrack argues with the picture.
Arthur Lipsett built his short films at the National Film Board of Canada from discarded outtakes and overheard speech. Very Nice, Very Nice was nominated for an Academy Award, and Stanley Kubrick wrote to ask him to make the trailer for Dr. Strangelove. George Lucas has called the Force in Star Wars an echo of a phrase in Lipsett's 21-87.
Films to start with
In the order they were made. Runtimes are approximate.
Very Nice, Very Nice
Snapshots and found sound that pick apart the cheerful surface of modern life. It was nominated for the Academy Award for best live action short.
21-87
NFB discards and his own street footage from Montreal and New York, cut into a portrait of a society run by machines. It won first prize at Ann Arbor in 1964.
Free Fall
Built from leftover film fragments. It began as a chance-based collaboration with John Cage, who withdrew.
Where it led
Lines from these films into work you may already know.
Nearby
Movements, forms and techniques that share filmmakers or methods with this one.