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Histories of abstract cinema often begin with Oskar Fischinger, a filmmaker and animator who was certainly a pioneer of the form. But these four silent shorts by Walter Ruttmann (1887–1941), Lichtspiel: Opus I, II, III & IV (1921–25) predate Fischinger’s work, and also prefigure Fischinger’s own animations of swooping shapes, blooming circles and stabbing triangles. Ruttmann’s abstractions are very sophisticated considering they’re such early examples of this type of experimental cinema. Some of the sequences in Opus IV resemble the kinds of graphics seen during title sequences in TV programmes of the 1960s.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• 7362, a film by Pat O’Neill
• Here and There, a film by Andrzej Pawlowski
• Power Spot by Michael Scroggins
• OffOn by Scott Bartlett
• The Flow III
• Chris Parks
• Len Lye
• Matrix III by John Whitney
• Symphonie Diagonale by Viking Eggeling
• Mary Ellen Bute: Films 1934–1957
• Norman McLaren
• John Whitney’s Catalog
• Arabesque by John Whitney
• Moonlight in Glory
• Jordan Belson on DVD
• Ten films by Oskar Fischinger
• Lapis by James Whitney