Music: Carl Stone. Colored pen-and-ink drawings, like topological maps of biomorphic objects, grow and evolve from the red star. Once the master image is formed, this continuously throbbing, pulsating sight is used to ring changes based on years of optical work. Music and picture work together to create a mood of ecstatic tranquility. The bright colors, beautiful music, surprise at the end, etc. make this a good film for young children. Awards: Sinking Creek Film & Video Festival, 1973; Washington National Student Film Festival, 1974; Brooklyn Independent Filmmakers Exposition, 1974; Vanguard Int'l Competition of Electronic Music for Film, 1974; Humboldt Film Festival, 1974. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with iotaCenter and National Film Preservation Foundation in 2007.
A space occupies it, awaiting to be unlocked by a freeing action or notion. What lies ahead is its determination.
Black-and-white abstract animated short of light, shadows, and reflections by The Dodals (Karel Dodal (1900-1986) in collaboration with his wife, Irena Dodalová).
An attempt to constitute a human / machine dialogue. It shows the filmmaker’s blood as seen / heard with the eyes / ears of the machine which is a film projector with optical sound. He affixed his blood onto clear film leader by cutting into the flesh and then pressing the film leader onto the wound. Additionally he had blood taken with a syringe and afterwards dripped it on the film leader. fresh and clotted blood was used.
Cut up animation and collage technique by Harry Smith synchronized to the jazz of Thelonious Monk's Mysterioso.
"Marx was born in Queensland, Australia, and was a landscape painter and model there before moving to San Francisco. However, when she arrived, she found herself in the midst of fascinating non-objective painting and filmmaking activity. She was greatly influenced by the work of Harry Smith and Jordan Belson, and changed her own style to non-objective, receiving graphic inspiration from Jungian brain drawings, symbols in the occult sciences, and the design used by Eastern cultures, all of which being important elements in the San Francisco school mystical school of non-objective art." -Robert Pike, A Critical Study of the West Coast Experimental Film Movement. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2000.
An abstract animation with a motif of a dragonfly, and a complex multi-exposure landscape of a field and a woman's naked body overlap.
Rainer Kohlberger’s abstract film was created entirely without a camera. Through digital algorithms, he precisely arranged a rhythm of light and shadow that pulsates off the screen into our physical space with blinding intensity. The presence of light is almost felt as we are sucked into the image to become its ghostly accomplice. As we leave the theatre, the optical vibrations continue to haunt us.
A horse goddess gives birth to three powerful brothers who set out into the Underworld to save three princesses from three evil dragons and reclaim their ancestors' lost kingdom.
This visual poetry is a celebration of the full spectrum of womanhood, from the complex vulnerability to the hidden power.
Enigma is something of a more glamorous version of White Hole, with a wide variety of elaborate textures (often composed of iconographic and religious symbols) converging towards the centre of the screen.
Borrowing its title from a treatise by Aristotle, the latest film by Makino Takashi is an abstract work that finds its drive in the clash between light and darkness. Entirely composed of superimposed images of Tokyo’s landscape and water sites, the film takes its rhythm from the cycles of repetition that are the pillars of life and civilisation. As light emerges from the chaos, Jim O’Rourke’s ambient drone sets the tone for what is to come.
[The] Insinuation of accidentally spilled ink that would be running across the paper in random, aleatory oozes displaces the graceful liquidity of the careful animated choreography. - William Moritz
An experimental film: dozens of pictorial techniques applied directly on celluloid; a work of impressive aesthetics that recovers certain ideas of abstract expressionism: endless chromaticism, constant mutations, the music of the cosmos, mysticism, synesthesia… and an enigmatic title that, although it imitates the phonetics of the Basque language, means nothing.
In this animated short, simple geometric forms as thin and flat as playing cards constantly form and re-form to the sound of the koto, a 13-stringed Japanese instrument.
"An exciting experiment in the tradition of Oskar Fischinger (Komposition in Blau, 1935), Dwinell Grant (Composition No. 1, 1940) and Slavko Vorkapich (Abstract Experiment in Kodachrome, 1950s). Max Hattler presents a well-done interaction between music and moving images. Space is turned upside down and the animated objects become faceless dancers in a constructivist ballet." Vienna Independent Shorts 2010, jury statement by Anton Fuxjäger