{"id":16130,"date":"2014-12-16T03:28:18","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T02:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=16130"},"modified":"2021-11-11T17:01:34","modified_gmt":"2021-11-11T16:01:34","slug":"walter-ruttmanns-abstract-cinema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2014\/12\/16\/walter-ruttmanns-abstract-cinema\/","title":{"rendered":"Walter Ruttmann&#8217;s abstract cinema"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=od0MxuD4xxQ\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"ruttmann1.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/ruttmann1.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>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\u20131941), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=od0MxuD4xxQ\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Lichtspiel: Opus I, II, III &amp; IV<\/em><\/a> (1921\u201325) predate Fischinger&#8217;s work, and also prefigure Fischinger&#8217;s own animations of swooping shapes, blooming circles and stabbing triangles. Ruttmann&#8217;s abstractions are very sophisticated considering they&#8217;re such early examples of this type of experimental cinema. Some of the sequences in <em>Opus IV<\/em> resemble the kinds of graphics seen during title sequences in TV programmes of the 1960s.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=od0MxuD4xxQ\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"ruttmann2.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/ruttmann2.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/themed-archive-pages\/the-abstract-cinema-archive\/\">The abstract cinema archive<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u20131941), Lichtspiel: Opus I, II, III &amp; IV (1921\u201325) predate Fischinger&#8217;s work, and also prefigure Fischinger&#8217;s own animations of swooping shapes, blooming circles and stabbing triangles. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2014\/12\/16\/walter-ruttmanns-abstract-cinema\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Walter Ruttmann&#8217;s abstract cinema&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[49,7],"tags":[3506,2864,6786,6785],"class_list":["post-16130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abstract-cinema","category-film","tag-james-whitney","tag-jordan-belson","tag-oskar-fischinger","tag-walter-ruttmann"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-4ca","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}