Syndromes and a Century - Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006, 35mm
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In Titan's Goblet - Peter Hutton, 1991, 16mm
Five: 5 long takes dedicated to Yasujiro Ozu - Abbas Kiarostami, 2003, DV
Spirals - Oskar Fischinger, 1926, 35mm
6 comments:
Anonymous
said...
(messed up first attempt to comment...)
These are indeed gorgeous. I completely forgot about that sequence in Syndromes. Why I didn't think of Fischinger either? Spirals is stunning, as is Circles even. I wonder: who might be Fishchinger's inheritor today, or his handmaking tradition well and truly a thing of the past?
Good question... Off the top of my head, I can't think of anybody who's really getting down & dirty with stock purely to play around with the geometry of basic pictorial elements: lines, shapes, contours, contrasts, colours... In terms of major artists: Fischinger, Richter --> McLaren, Smith, possibly Brakhage --> ? I guess some of the great modern avant-gardists like Tscherkassky or Arnold have carried on in the "handmade" tradition (step-printing and the like), but even they've stopped making films now... A slightly sad state of affairs, now I come to think about it!
That's what struck me too, unless I've overlooked something it seems digital techniques have truly killed off those heritage methods. I would like to resist the idea that that hand-painting cells, and other traditional abstractionist techniques had been exhausted (even though Fischinger, Mclaren etc. would take some beating!), but sadly I've scant examples to support it..
Fischinger Research Pages: www.centerforvisualmusic.org/Fischinger/
There are many artists working with "handmade" film today, an analog, celluloid practice. The reference to Fischinger's "handmaking tradition" isn't correct usage of that term. Fischinger used photographic animation methods, though of course quite radical for his time. 'Handmade' film is an entirely different animal, made without a camera by directly painting, scratching, punching on the film, which Fischinger did not do. Len Lye did, and others today do. Though of course no one has surpassed Fischinger.
Visit Center for Visual Music's library and other resources to learn about this contemporary work, by artists including Steve Woloshen, Devon Damonte, Samantha Krukowski, many more.
6 comments:
(messed up first attempt to comment...)
These are indeed gorgeous. I completely forgot about that sequence in Syndromes. Why I didn't think of Fischinger either? Spirals is stunning, as is Circles even. I wonder: who might be Fishchinger's inheritor today, or his handmaking tradition well and truly a thing of the past?
[is]
Good question... Off the top of my head, I can't think of anybody who's really getting down & dirty with stock purely to play around with the geometry of basic pictorial elements: lines, shapes, contours, contrasts, colours... In terms of major artists: Fischinger, Richter --> McLaren, Smith, possibly Brakhage --> ? I guess some of the great modern avant-gardists like Tscherkassky or Arnold have carried on in the "handmade" tradition (step-printing and the like), but even they've stopped making films now... A slightly sad state of affairs, now I come to think about it!
That's what struck me too, unless I've overlooked something it seems digital techniques have truly killed off those heritage methods. I would like to resist the idea that that hand-painting cells, and other traditional abstractionist techniques had been exhausted (even though Fischinger, Mclaren etc. would take some beating!), but sadly I've scant examples to support it..
Fischinger Research Pages:
www.centerforvisualmusic.org/Fischinger/
There are many artists working with "handmade" film today, an analog, celluloid practice. The reference to Fischinger's "handmaking tradition" isn't correct usage of that term. Fischinger used photographic animation methods, though of course quite radical for his time. 'Handmade' film is an entirely different animal, made without a camera by directly painting, scratching, punching on the film, which Fischinger did not do. Len Lye did, and others today do. Though of course no one has surpassed Fischinger.
Visit Center for Visual Music's library and other resources to learn about this contemporary work, by artists including Steve Woloshen, Devon Damonte, Samantha Krukowski, many more.
Thanks, CVM, for clarifying that after all this time!
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