Perspectrum

Animation short by Alina Maliszewska.

An attempt to constitute a human / machine dialogue. It shows the filmmaker’s blood as seen / heard with the eyes / ears of the machine which is a film projector with optical sound. He affixed his blood onto clear film leader by cutting into the flesh and then pressing the film leader onto the wound. Additionally he had blood taken with a syringe and afterwards dripped it on the film leader. fresh and clotted blood was used.

A space occupies it, awaiting to be unlocked by a freeing action or notion. What lies ahead is its determination.

Black-and-white abstract animated short of light, shadows, and reflections by The Dodals (Karel Dodal (1900-1986) in collaboration with his wife, Irena Dodalová).

Cut up animation and collage technique by Harry Smith synchronized to the jazz of Thelonious Monk's Mysterioso.

"Marx was born in Queensland, Australia, and was a landscape painter and model there before moving to San Francisco. However, when she arrived, she found herself in the midst of fascinating non-objective painting and filmmaking activity. She was greatly influenced by the work of Harry Smith and Jordan Belson, and changed her own style to non-objective, receiving graphic inspiration from Jungian brain drawings, symbols in the occult sciences, and the design used by Eastern cultures, all of which being important elements in the San Francisco school mystical school of non-objective art." -Robert Pike, A Critical Study of the West Coast Experimental Film Movement. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2000.

The mutating forms of Tensai Banpaku, or “Genius Expo” create a stunning abstract orchestra.

Music: Carl Stone. Colored pen-and-ink drawings, like topological maps of biomorphic objects, grow and evolve from the red star. Once the master image is formed, this continuously throbbing, pulsating sight is used to ring changes based on years of optical work. Music and picture work together to create a mood of ecstatic tranquility. The bright colors, beautiful music, surprise at the end, etc. make this a good film for young children. Awards: Sinking Creek Film & Video Festival, 1973; Washington National Student Film Festival, 1974; Brooklyn Independent Filmmakers Exposition, 1974; Vanguard Int'l Competition of Electronic Music for Film, 1974; Humboldt Film Festival, 1974. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with iotaCenter and National Film Preservation Foundation in 2007.

1995 Joan C. Gratz claymation short film

Enigma is something of a more glamorous version of White Hole, with a wide variety of elaborate textures (often composed of iconographic and religious symbols) converging towards the centre of the screen.

A visual and musical elaboration on the Crab Canon in which the theme of intersecting beams is played against itself going backwards.

Hand painted directly onto film stock by Margaret Tait, this film features animated dancing figures, accompanied by authentic calypso music.

Mamori transports us into a black-and-white universe of fluid shapes, dappled and striated with shadows and light, where the texture of the visuals and of the celluloid itself have been transformed through the filmmaker’s artistry. The raw material of images and sounds was captured in the Amazon rainforest by filmmaker Karl Lemieux and avant-garde composer Francisco López, a specialist in field recordings. Re-filming the photographs on 16 mm stock, then developing the film stock itself and digitally editing the whole, Lemieux transmutes the raw images and accompanying sounds into an intense sensory experience at the outer limits of representation and abstraction. Fragmented musical phrases filter through the soundtrack, evoking in our imagination the clamour of the tropical rainforest in this remote Amazonian location called Mamori.

A film about uncanny valleys and the space between. Painted 16mm film undergoes a monstrous transformation becoming neither analog nor digital.

An exploration of the relationship between sound and picture inspired by the two lights (twi-light) found inside film projectors.

A deep dive into a snowstorm of structural chaos and a blizzard of exploding gestural animation.

A categorical accumulation of abstract patterns. Lines, colours and sounds obey an impenetrable logic. A quiet film that dares to be resolutely experimental. Chaotic equations by the Chinese mathematician Wang Lin are tackled by an analogue computer, a small battery of surplus high-frequency oscillators and Joost Rekveld.

Sketch Film #3 (Tomonari Nishikawa, 2006, 3 min., super 8, silent, 18/24fps, b&w, USA/Japan) The third film in the series, which starts with a sequence of paired images: a focused image and a blurred image of the same subject, which was caused by a diagonal camera movement. Later, it shows an experiment to produce an apparent depth by rotating an apparent shape. It was edited in camera and hand-processed afterwards.

[The] Insinuation of accidentally spilled ink that would be running across the paper in random, aleatory oozes displaces the graceful liquidity of the careful animated choreography. - William Moritz

Borrowing its title from a treatise by Aristotle, the latest film by Makino Takashi is an abstract work that finds its drive in the clash between light and darkness. Entirely composed of superimposed images of Tokyo’s landscape and water sites, the film takes its rhythm from the cycles of repetition that are the pillars of life and civilisation. As light emerges from the chaos, Jim O’Rourke’s ambient drone sets the tone for what is to come.