Large Association of Movie Blogs
Large Association of Movie Blogs

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Happy 117th Birthday To Filmmaker-Painter-Animator Oskar Fischinger


"He was cinema's Kandinsky, an animator who, beginning in the 1920's in Germany, created exquisite 'visual music' using geometric patterns and shapes choreographed tightly to classical music and jazz." John Canemaker, New York Times

"Music is not limited to the world of sound. There exists a music of the visual world." Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967)



Google paid tribute to the pioneering filmmaker-animator-painter Oskar Fischinger with a Doodle commemorating his birthday on June 22, 1900. The Telegraph paid homage as well.

Fischinger began his filmmaking career in the 1920's with Wax Experiments using dyes in pieces of wax, then shooting the shapes and movements created frame-by-frame.



There is a DVD collection one can purchase from the Center For Visual Music (CVM).



Here are excerpts, from the CVM Oskar Fischinger channel on Vimeo.





The Oskar Fischinger Ten Films collection can be ordered here. The Center For Visual Music is working on a followup to this collection.



One would hope that Fischinger's astonishing short subjects will find their way to Blu-ray eventually. That said, in this animation aficionado's opinion, these films really do need to be seen on the big screen for full impact. Maybe such a screening could be arranged through Center For Visual Music in Los Angeles; have not inquired about this.



If you are not an avid sports fan or an aficionado of 1950's and 1960's movies, seen in their original CinemaScope dimensions, here's a reason to buy a first-rate big screen TV patched into a decent 21st century sound system: to see breathtaking "visual music," 20th century style, by the likes of Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye, Norman McLaren and Jordan Belson.

1 comment:

rnigma said...

I remember watching Marty Feldman's show when I was a kid. It was a sort of prelude to Monty Python... Spike Milligan was writer/performer on The Goon Show, a HUGE influence on the Pythons... and the animated titles were by the pre-Python Terry Gilliam.