{animation} – Page 35 – { feuilleton }

An Optical Poem by Oskar Fischinger

Oskar Fischinger’s only successful collaboration with a Hollywood studio was this 7-minute animation made for MGM in 1937. As with some of Fischinger’s earlier films, a piece of classical music is illustrated with dancing shapes of cut-out paper. The music in this instance is Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody, and this short was one of the films that brought Fischinger’s to Walt Disney’s attention when the Disney studio was planning a similarly abstract sequence for Fantasia. Fischinger worked on the Toccata and Fugue opening but his early efforts for Disney were dismissed as “too dinky” by the man responsible for a ubiquitous anthropomorphic mouse.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The abstract cinema archive

Mea Culpa, a film by Bruce Conner

More David Byrne. Artist Bruce Conner made two films in 1981 using pieces of music from Byrne & Eno’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts album: America Is Waiting and Mea Culpa. The latter is the more abstract of the two, with the drums and fragmented voices matched to dancing particles from science films. Watch it here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The South Bank Show: Talking Heads
• The Catherine Wheel by Twyla Tharp
• Moonlight in Glory
• My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts

Jumping, a film by Osamu Tezuka

Osamu Tezuka is best known as a prolific manga pioneer and the creator of Astro Boy. He also found time to direct several short animations which play with the form a little more than is allowed in big commercial productions. Copyright restrictions have been keeping these away from YouTube but Jumping (1984) is an exception. This is six minutes from the viewpoint of a young girl jumping along a street. A car approaches so she jumps over it. Then she jumps over a hedge, and a house, and… Watch it and see.

Balance, a film by Wolfgang & Christopher Lauenstein

Balance (1989) is a short and wordless animation in which five men stand on a square platform floating in space. When one of the men fishes up a box from the void the additional weight, and the ensuing struggle for possession, causes problems. Watch it here.

The Sandman, a film by Paul Berry

Nothing to do with Neil Gaiman’s Goth dream-master, and not a film for children despite appearances, Paul Berry’s short animation, The Sandman (1991), is based on Der Sandmann by ETA Hoffmann. The less said about its content, the better; watch it to the end. Paul Berry later worked as a puppet animator on feature films including The Nightmare Before Christmas. I didn’t know—and was dismayed to discover—that he died in 2001 at the age of 40.