Film is Rhythm (1921) by Hans Richter
"Richter focused instead on the "temporality" of the cinematic viewing experience by emphasizing movement and the shifting relationship of form elements in time. His major creative breakthrough was the discovery of cinematic rhythm, which he then used as the title of his first film, Film ist Rhythmus: Rhythmus ’21 (Film is Rhythm: Rhythm 21, 1921). For Richter, rhythm was “the essence of emotional expression”: "Rhythm expresses something different from thought.... Rhythm cannot be explained completely by thought nor can thought be put in terms of rhythm... both find their connection and identity in... the life principle, from which they spring and upon which they can build...'
In Rhythmus ’21, generally considered to be the first completely abstract film, Richter used these principles to create a work of remarkable structural cohesion. Completed by using stop motion and forward and backward printing in addition to an animation table, the film consists of a continuous flow of rectangular and square shapes that “move” forward, backward, vertically, and horizontally across the screen. Syncopated by an uneven rhythm, forms grow, break apart and are fused together in a variety of configurations for just over three minutes (at silent speed). The constantly shifting forms render the spatial situation of the film ambivalent, an idea that is reinforced when Richter reverses the figure-background relationship by switching, on two occasions, from positive to negative film.
In so doing, Richter draws attention to the flat rectangular surface of the screen, destroying the perspectival spatial illusion assumed to be integral to film’s photographic base, and emphasizing instead the kinetic play of contrasts of position, proportion and light distribution. By restricting himself to the use of square shapes and thus simplifying his compositions, Richter was able to concentrate on the arrangement of the essential elements of cinema: movement, time and light.
Disavowing the beauty of “form” for its own sake, Rhythmus ’21 instead expresses emotional content through the mutual interaction of forms moving in contrast and relation to one another. Nowhere is this more evident than in the final “crescendo” of the film, in which all of the disparate shapes of the film briefly coalesce into a Mondrian-like spatial grid before decomposing into a field of pure light."
Adapted from a text by Richard Suchenski, Hans Richter, sensesofcinema.com/2009/great-directors/hans-richter/
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Hans Richter - Film Ist Rhythm (1921)
Film 2.
Free Radicals (1958-1979) by Len Lye
Free Radicals is a black-and-white animated short by artist Len Lye. Lye made the film by directly scratching the film stock. The resulting "figures of motion" are set to music by the Bagirmi tribe of Africa.
"I made Free Radicals from 16mm black film leader. I took a graver, various kinds of needles. (My range included arrowheads for romanticism.) You stick down the sides with scotch tape and you get to work with scratching the stuff out. … … You hold your hand at the right height and act is if you were making your signature. It goes on forever. You can carry a pictographic design in your head and make a little design. You can't see what you're doing because your hand is in the way. That's why those things have that kind of spastic look."
- Len Lye
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Free Radicals (excerpt)
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