TENSAI BANPAKU

This dazzling stop-motion animation provided Vorkapich with a forum to demonstrate complex perceptual theories related to the persistence of vision and phi phenomenon. The dance of objects and their movements before the camera lens–somewhat similar to Oskar Fischinger’s abstractions–illustrate many visual sensations playfully executed by Vorkapich.

Rolling animated images of kaleidoscopic heads, skeletons and other absurdities. Abstact, surreal and darkly comic. This short was Run Wrake's (as J.M. Wrake) graduation film from The Royal College of Art, 1990

Coiling and turning orbs travel through the stratosphere. Birth and transcendence short animation from Run Wrake and Howie B.

It is well known that the disposition of the images drawn by Escher are neither for animation nor for pre-animation; actually, quite the opposite. His images appear to be the carrying out of metamorphic dissolves. A bird gives way to the recognition of a house, which turns into fish, which turns into birds, and so on. Not a single flapping of wings takes place; everything is reiterated and fixed, becoming immersed in and re-emerging from a static continuum. All of Escher is an homage to one of the major animating forces of the cinema: the cross-dissolve. Precisely there, I found cinematic attitudes: in the house which turns into fish and in everything that transforms into something else. I gradually managed to figure out various types of non-existent sequences and then finally found myself dissolved, crossing over metamorphically. —P.G.

Both a scientific and dreamlike documentary at once, Ghost Cell is a stereoscopic plunge into the guts of an organic Paris seen as a cell through a virtual microscope.

White circles appear and disappear on a black surface.

Short film by Mary Ellen Bute

From 1967-71 Barry Spinello made films without camera or tape recorder by hand drawing both sound and picture directly onto clear 16mm leader. His interest and education (at Columbia) was in music, painting, and poetry. His effort was to merge these three: “to squeeze sound and picture out of the same tube – to weave a cloth with warp as sound, woof as picture, and meaning the fabric itself."

The very first film in which Maya Yonesho tried to show her thoughts. Even just circles may be able to show emotions as a person in animation. The main circle (character) is slightly pinker than the other grey circles (people) and she thought she was very special. But she is very grey in a colourful world. She will find out that grey is not just a boring colour.

1995 Joan C. Gratz claymation short film

2001 Joan C. Gratz animated short

White Tape explores the theme of boundaries: the frame, the space between brushstrokes and the implications of occupation.

From the infinitely small to the infinitely large, all things in the universe are tightly connected: they interact and restructure in a combination of movements and perpetual metamorphoses.

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.

Documentary recording of one day of children's play in the yard of a Warsaw housing estate.

You Take Care Now, an early student film, is a perfect exemplar of Ann Marie Fleming's idiosyncratic vision and stands as one of her signature works. Made on 16mm, and incorporating found footage, original material, animation, and processed images (Vancouver's groundbreaking avant-garde cinema of the 1970s is a decided influence here), Fleming's film offers a visually dazzling, emotionally wrenching, oddly humorous account of two profound personal traumas.

Experimental short film by Michio Mihara.

A video diary of Hatoba Tsugu's summer vacation.

A psychedelic, avant-garde collage film designed to accompany PRPL PPL's experimental album of the same name.

An abstract pursuit that leaves you gasping for breath.