John Abraham and American Avant-Garde Film makes a match

Robert Florey, The Love of Zero, 1928. 35mm film.

The Harry Ransom Center Presents
"Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1893-1941"
at the Alamo Drafthouse.
The Harry Ransom Center presents the film series "Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1893-1941," the first-ever retrospective of the pre-WWII avant garde film movement in America. The screenings begin in Austin on Feb. 12 and run through March 11, 2004.
Presented as double features on five consecutive Thursdays at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Downtown, the 10 different screenings are comprised of more than 100 restored and preserved 35mm and 16mm films. A collaborative film preservation project, "Unseen Cinema" was organized by Anthology Film Archives, New York, and Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, and sponsored by Cineric, Inc.

Through a series of 50- to 90-minute screenings of newly restored rare films, "Unseen Cinema" surveys the singular but overlooked accomplishments of cinematic pioneers during the formative period of American film. The series postulates an innovative and often controversial view of experimental cinema as a product of avant-garde artists, Hollywood directors, and amateur movie-makers working collectively and as individuals at all levels of film production during the last decade of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

Many of these films have not been available since their creation over a century ago, and until now almost all have been unavailable in quality projection prints. Some had never before been screened in public and almost none have been available in pristine projection prints until now. All told, the series strongly reminds us of the history and the artistic triumphs that can be revealed through preservation, or lost through complacency.