Oskar Fischinger

3-screen experimental animation

Compilation of abstract animated films by Oskar Fischinger; includes his short films Spirals, Spiritual Constructions, Study 6, Liebesspiel, Radio Dynamics, and Motion Painting No. 1.

Motion Painting No. 1 is a 1947 experimental short animated film in which film artist Oskar Fischinger put images in motion to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 3, BWV 1048. It is a film of a painting (oil on acrylic glass); Fischinger filmed each brushstroke over the course of 9 months. In 1997, this film was selected for inclusion in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

A short experimental film.

An mutoscope motion picture installation commissioned for the 86th anniversary of the Guggenheim museum. Later preserved and turned into a short film.

An experiment into what the director termed 'colour rhythm'.

An experiment in color and rhythm with no music.

a short animation from Oskar Fischinger, drawings with periodic colour coding and some cells completely painted.

Stars and stripes forever and ever and ever.

Abstract animation.

Abstract animation.

A dance of shapes. A title card tells us this is an experiment in conveying the mental images of music in a visual form. Liszt's "Second Hungarian Rhapsody" is the music. The shapes, all two-dimensional, are circles primarily, with some squares and rectangles, and a few triangles. The shapes move rhythmically to the music: receding from view or moving across the screen. Red circles on a blue background; light blue squares; white rectangles. Then, a red background of many circles with a few in the foreground. Red gives way to blue then to white. Shapes reappear as Liszt's themes re-occur. Then, with a few staccato notes and images, it's over.

In the 1936 short Allegretto, diamond and oval shapes in primary colors perform a sensual, upbeat ballet to the music of composer Ralph Rainger. The geometric dance is set against a background of expanding circles that suggest radio waves.

An abstract film in which every motion of coloured shapes is in strict synchronization with music

Animated cigarette advertisement.

The black and white, live-action Swiss Trip, scored with Bach's 3rd Brandenburg Concerto (like Motion Painting No. 1), is kind of a nature or travel film cut via noticeable (in-camera?) edits that give the impression the film is constantly blinking and foreshadow techniques Stan Brakhage would use in the '50s and '60s.

A continuous movement

An animated experimental film showing coloured circles moving to classical music, which only got past the 1934 censors billed as a commercial.

Muratti was a German brand of cigarettes. Fischinger transforms bunches of standing cigarettes into things that resemble human beings. At first they walk daintily around packages of Muratti tins. Gradually as the film progresses their motions become more graceful, as they do "slides" and other motions and formations associated with dance. The apotheosis of the film is remarkable: Dozens and dozens of cigarettes, arranged in Busby Berkeley-like fashion, repeatedly bow to the horizon, where a giant sun labeled "Muratti" rises in response to to their worshiping activity.

Experimental short film by Oskar Fischinger

One of the first color films in Europe, made with the Gaspar Color process.

Experimental short film by Oskar Fischinger

Fischinger's abstract designs accompanied by Gitta Alpar singing.

Curious and intrigued by technological advances, Fischinger here also experiments with "synthetic sound" (he would not be the only one: later Norman McLaren played a lot with it). Thus he contructed the optical sound track directly onto the film. But beyond identifying harmonics and noises, he sought to understand to what sound emissions corresponded the geometrical and regular designs which, visibly, appear in their turn synchronously on the screen as true and proper "ornaments" of the sound which is being produced.

An abstract set to "Merry Wives of Windsor" by Nicolai.

An abstract to music from "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" by Mozart.

An abstract to music from "Aida" by Verdi.

An experimental abstract animation.

An experimental short from Oskar Fischinger

An experimental short from Oskar Fischinger

An experimental short from Oskar Fischinger

The first Studies were synchronized with records (Fischinger made a total of 13 Studies all without sound). It was only with the introduction of sound, beginning with Study No 6 that the films did full justice to this musical principle. The play of the white lines, the arcs, and the upside-down U’s running hither and thither like ballet dancers was brought into perfect synchronization with the music, and thus the films offered an abstract illustration of the melodies. Study No 6 is certainly the best of his films in terms of forms. - Hans Scheugl and Ernst Schmidt, Jr.

An abstract ballet set to "I've Never Seen a Smile Like Yours".

Experimental short film by Oskar Fischinger

A work of abstract animation

Directed by Oskar Fischinger. Germany, 1930, 35mm, black & white, silent, 2 min.

A work of abstract animation

A scientist discovers that there's gold on the moon. He builds a rocket to fly there, but there's too much rivalry among the crew to have a successful expedition.

A scientist discovers that there's gold on the moon. He builds a rocket to fly there, but there's too much rivalry among the crew to have a successful expedition.

Never-released early experiments, animation drawings and tests from Oskar Fishcinger

One of Oskar Fischinger's earliest films, Seelische Konstruktionen (as it is known in German), clearly points the way to the masterpieces of musically-blended experimental animation he would conceive in the decades to come. The sense of masterful timing and rhythm, the easy and natural -- though patently Fischinger-esque -- character traits of the subjects, and the smooth precision of both line and movement are all present already. Unique is the black-silhouetted, semi-cartoon characters (not nearly as rigidly self-contained as Lotte Reiniger's cut-out forms) which seem to adhere to no physical limitations whatsoever. Morphing into shapes, structures, objects, patterns, and even one another, as though they were made of pure mercury and set to music. As for the "story", it's rather non-sensical, and certainly silly, but also has a slightly dark and devious tinge to it as well; men becoming monsters, uncontrollable shape-shifting and the constant, almost desperate movement.

For the production of this film, Oskar Fischinger tinted various layers of hot wax. After cooling, the resulting lump of wax resembled a marble cake. Fischinger then began to cut off slices from the lump, photographing each step.

In 1927, motivated by a longing for freedom, Fischinger set off on a walking trip from Munich to Berlin. Covering the distance in nearly four weeks, he captured the country’s hidden beauty. His voyage serves as a symbolical transition and underlines a belief that people are the same everywhere.

Directed by Oskar Fischinger.

Parallel bars moving up and down in rhythmic patterns.

In 'Spirals' Oskar Fischinger designed visual patterns of extreme complexity which often develop in overlapping cycles, yet he interrupts these patterns with radical editing of single frames of contrasting imagery. 'Spirals' exists as a fragmentary unfinished experimental film.

What remains, unedited, of the first episode of a serial by several hands, subject to a form of supervision-control by Fischinger. It opens with an extremely happy image (a "creative hand" which subsequently returns from time to time) — with shading and movements which appear to have been achieved by the use of the Rotoscope — characters who evoke the commedia dell’arte, in a somewhat joyless tone, but visually dramatic and with echoes of "caligarism". Enno Patalas would like to visit the other surviving episodes, better to understand the spirit of the operation conceived by Louis Seel, designer emeritus and the inspiration of the project.