Hans Richter's breakthrough studies of movement made the artistic leap between abstract painting and abstract film. A major figure in the development of Expressionism, Dada, De Stijl, Constructivism, and Surrealism, Richter was the creator (along with Viking Eggeling) of the Abstract Cinema -- the sp

Dada, Pioneering, Playful, Political, Representational, Surreal, Surrealist film

Tarkovsky's poetic films, interwoven with loose narrative threads and strikingly sublime images, demand a lot from the viewer, but return much more. In his signature piece "Andrei Rublev" (1969), a three-hour exposition on the fifteenth-century painter, Tarkovsky takes the viewer through series of sc

Depressive, Implosive, Moodscape, Pathos, Political

A visionary, revitalizing force in the New German Cinema of the 1970s, Werner Herzog articulated the dreams of the human spirit. In contrast to his contemporaries, who focused on frenzied, high-tech effects and chaotic jump cuts, Herzog used a lyrical film language to depict quiet spaces of epic unfo

Dystopic, Epic, Excessive, New german cinema, Pioneering, Political, Rebel, Tribal

Whether you find them aesthetically refreshing or merely overindulgent, the films of British avant-gardist Derek Jarman always present either visual or emotional surprises. A restlessly inventive film artist and painter, Jarman railed against the conventional stuffiness of what passed for art in his

Experimental, Homoerotic, Pioneering, Political, Psychological, Queer