experimental cinema & avant-garde (shorts) - 40's

A short look at the vampire bat sucking blood from a guinea pig.

In a freshwater pond, various aquatic creatures try to eat others in order to avoid being eaten themselves.

In a village in Brittany, a young maid and an old woman are spinning while the wind blows threateningly outdoors. In spite of the bad omen, the young maid's boyfriend decides to sail away. Worried, the young maid ask for help to a mysterious old man and his magical crystal ball in order to calm down the rough seas.

This is the name of some experiments made by Fischinger; it was not completed or released as a finished film. Some of these experiments were edited into the final film called Radio Dynamics.

A short painted film by Oskar Fishchinger which films images to the music of Johann Bach.

From the opening credits: "An experimental film (...) made without camera, by drawing directly upon 35 mm film with an ordinary pen and ink." Various abstract shapes interact and transform into one another.

An experimental film of dots animated by being drawn directly on filmstock.

A film made without a camera, made by painting directly on the film.

In a drawn-on-film animation, a hen gradually breaks apart into an abstract movement of lines as it dances to a barn dance.

A Valentine's Day greeting to television viewers. "We love our audience" appears in squiggly lettering across the screen. Then a line becomes a heart; a second heart joins in, and the hearts play with each other: morphing into arrows shot through the hearts, lips that kiss, and bows that entwine. A third small heart joins the family. The lines then write, "Will you be our Valentine?"

It's midnight in a graveyard. The principal characters are spooks, ghosts, bats, bells, and, at the end, the sun. As midnight strikes, 12 spooks appear, then two ghosts. They move to the music's rhythm. Against the black night, they are blue and yellow. Bats appear as does a xylophone of bones. Mist rises, spooks swirl. A bell tolls. The sky turns light blue, the ghosts' dance slows. Then black night returns bringing intimations of frenzy. Bones play snare drums; spooks peek out of square graves. Scary faces appear. Frenetic movement takes over. A rooster crows and all return to earth as the sun's light appears.

A film made without a camera by painting directly onto the celluloid.

Colorful abstract shapes and lines move exuberantly to the syncopated modernistic piano music of Edwin Gershefsky.

Against a background of bluish light, several objects appear: a square, a circle, and a set of rods. As the background color occasionally varies in shade between blue and rose, the objects move around, forming various patterns.

In December, 1941, using music by Stravinsky, this film provides a reaction to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. An egg is smashed by a hammer; red color with white and then blue dominates the frame. Blue paint runs; small bulbs float. The dark colors spread. White, red, blue, and black dominate the frame. Then comes fire. The bulbs burn and break. A broken bulb's filaments are exposed.

The film is set to the music of Franz Schubert and is very strange. Much of it consists of disembodies arms and legs all moving about to the music. There are also folks in body suits moving rhythmically to the tune. Occasionally, there are shots of a guy in full color with multiple exposures.

A recently unearthed experimental documentary of the crashing sea set to Mendelssohn's "Fingal's Cave." An example of the filmmakers' "new cinema" theory which held that film should be more like music than literature. This film is based solely on its arrangement of images.

A look at how the weather bureau tries to warn farmers and businessmen about approaching large storms. Although some precautions can be taken to lessen their impact, storms have to run their course, and there is really not much we can do about them.

An illustration of a traditional French Canadian song in the form of progressing cutouts and still pictures.

Silently, a woman wakes on a beach as the tides go in reverse. Her dreamscape unfolds as she tries to locate a chess piece traveling from the beach to a party to a country road and then back.

The setting with the low walls and river views is located in a private area of The Cloisters museum.

A woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space, her dark inner desires play out on-screen.

A dissatisfied dreamer awakes, goes out in the night seeking a 'light' and is drawn through the needle's eye. A dream of a dream, he returns to bed less empty than before.