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89-540: The Qatsi trilogy is a series of three non-narrative films produced by Godfrey Reggio and scored by Philip Glass . The trilogy includes Koyaanisqatsi (1982), Powaqqatsi (1988), and Naqoyqatsi (2002). The titles of the films are derived from the Hopi language , in which the word qatsi translates to "life." The series was produced by the Institute For Regional Education, who also created

178-412: A 1963 Canadian short abstract collage film of discarded footage and city street scenes, had a profound influence on Lucas and sound designer/editor Walter Murch . Lucas greatly admired pure cinema and at film school became prolific at making 16mm nonstory noncharacter visual tone poems and cinéma vérité, with such titles as Look at Life , Herbie , 1:42.08 , The Emperor , Anyone Lived in

267-489: A German artistic movement initially and most predominant in painting, poetry and the theatre between 1910 and 1930, most precursors of the movement were not German. Furthermore, there have been expressionist writers of prose fiction, as well as non-German-speaking expressionist writers, and, while the movement declined in Germany with the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, there were subsequent expressionist works. Expressionism

356-548: A Pretty (how) Town , Filmmaker , and 6-18-67 . Lucas's tributes to 21-87 appear in several places in Star Wars , with the phrase, " the Force ", said to have been inspired by 21-87 in part. Lucas throughout his entire career was passionate and interested in camerawork and editing, defining himself as a filmmaker as opposed to a director, and he loved making abstract visual movies that create emotions purely through cinema. Music

445-514: A brief period of influence in American theatre, including the early modernist plays by Eugene O'Neill ( The Hairy Ape , The Emperor Jones and The Great God Brown ), Sophie Treadwell ( Machinal ) and Elmer Rice ( The Adding Machine ). Expressionist plays often dramatise the spiritual awakening and sufferings of their protagonists. Some utilise an episodic dramatic structure and are known as Stationendramen (station plays), modeled on

534-596: A color test of the animated section. He then created An Optical Poem (1937) for MGM , but received no profits because of the way the studio's bookkeeping system worked. Walt Disney had seen Lye's A Colour Box and became interested in producing abstract animation. A first result was the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor section in the "concert film" Fantasia (1940). He hired Oskar Fischinger to collaborate with effects animator Cy Young , but rejected and altered much of their designs, causing Fischinger to leave without credit before

623-497: A dynamic organism, offering a captivating glimpse of New York during its gritty peak. The short-fim maintains a continuous sense of movement, creating an illusion of organic evolution and transformation via time-lapse photography. In this portrayal, the city evolves into a dynamic entity pulsing with energy, vitality, and perpetual regeneration. It embodies a colossal organism, thriving on the life force of those drawn to it, each seeking to conquer its urban landscape. Titled "Organism," it

712-618: A family of musicians and analysed the elements of painting by reducing it into his "Generalbass der Malerei", a catalogue of typological elements, from which he would create new "orchestrations". In 1918 Viking Eggeling had been engaging in Dada activities in Zürich and befriended Hans Richter. According to Richter, absolute film originated in the scroll sketches that Viking Eggeling made in 1917–1918. On paper rolls up to 15 meters long, Eggeling would draw sketches of variations of small graphic designs, in such

801-614: A few dozens of short films over the years. The Nazis censorship against so-called " degenerate art " prevented the German abstract animation movement from developing after 1933. The last abstract motion picture screened in the Third Reich was Hans Fischinger 's Tanz der Farben (i.e. Dance of the Colors ) in 1939. The film was reviewed by the Film Review Office and by Georg Anschütz for

890-528: A film student at USC School of Cinematic Arts , where he saw many more inspiring cinematic works in class, particularly the visual movies coming out of the National Film Board of Canada like Arthur Lipsett 's 21-87 , the Canadian cameraman Jean-Claude Labrecque 's cinéma vérité 60 Cycles , the work of Norman McLaren , and the visualise cinéma vérité documentaries of Claude Jutra . Lipsett's 21-87 ,

979-412: A filter which rids them of all substantial accretions to produce their clear essence [...and] are assimilated and condensed into more general forms, into types, which he transcribes through simple short-hand formulae and symbols." Important precursors of Expressionism were the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), especially his philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1892);

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1068-445: A jumble of objects and reality thrown together at random." Among the proposed methods were: "Cinematic musical researches", "Daily exercises in freeing ourselves from mere photographed logic" and "Linear, plastic, chromatic equivalences, etc., of men, women, events, thoughts, music, feelings, weights, smells, noises (with white lines on black we shall show the inner, physical rhythm of a husband who discovers his wife in adultery and chases

1157-409: A leaflet about it and claimed that many people growing up with the hand-colored films of Georges Méliès and Ferdinand Zecca would try their hand on painting on film at that time. In 1913 Léopold Survage created his Rythmes colorés : over 100 abstract ink wash / watercolor drawings that he wanted to turn into a film. Unable to raise the funds, the film was not realized and Survage only exhibited

1246-426: A longer film. They shot all kinds of material in the street and in a studio, used Murphy's special beveled lenses and crudely animated showroom dummy legs. They chose the title Ballet Mécanique from an image by Francis Picabia that had been published in his New York 391 magazine, which had also featured a poem and art by Man Ray. They ran out of money before they could complete the film. Fernand Léger helped financing

1335-420: A more minimal, formal style. The movement also encompasses the work of the feminist critic/cinematic filmmaker Germaine Dulac , particularly Thème et variations (1928), Disque 957 (1928), and Cinegraphic Study of an Arabesque . In these, as well as in her theoretical writing, Dulac's goal was "pure" cinema, free from any influence from literature, the stage, or even the other visual arts. The style of

1424-477: A narrative film and a non-narrative film can be rather vague and is often open for interpretation. Unconventional imagery, concepts and structuring can obscure the narrativity of a film. Terms such as absolute film , cinéma pur , true cinema and integral cinema have been used for non-narrative films that aimed to create a purer experience of the distinctive qualities of film, like movement, rhythm and changing visual compositions. More narrowly, "absolute film"

1513-787: A neutral background with a moving camera. A number of devices can be regarded as early media for abstract animation or visual music, including color organs , chinese fireworks , the kaleidoscope , musical fountains and special animated slides for the magic lantern (like the chromatrope). Some of the earliest animation designs for stroboscopic devices (like the phénakisticope and the zoetrope) were abstract, including one Fantascope disc by inventor Joseph Plateau and many of Simon Stampfer 's Stroboscopische Scheiben (1833). Abstract film concepts were shaped by early 20th century art movements such as Cubism , Expressionism , Dadaism , Suprematism , Futurism , Precisionism and possible others. These art movements were beginning to gain momentum in

1602-410: A nonfiction film can be constructed as a narrative." Ruttmann's 1927 Berlin: Symphony of a Great City , Dziga Vertov 's Man with a Movie Camera (1929) and other cinéma vérité works can be considered as documentaries in the cinéma pur style. Documentary filmmaker, artist, and choreographer Hilary Harris (1929 – 1999) invested 15 years in crafting his time-lapse film portraying Manhattan as

1691-537: A part of the development of functionalism . In Mexico, in 1953, German émigré Mathias Goeritz published the Arquitectura Emocional ("Emotional Architecture") manifesto with which he declared that "architecture's principal function is emotion". Modern Mexican architect Luis Barragán adopted the term that influenced his work. The two of them collaborated in the project Torres de Satélite (1957–58) guided by Goeritz's principles of Arquitectura Emocional . It

1780-489: A phonograph. In 1927 Kasimir Malevich had created a 3-page scenario in manuscript with explanatory color drawings for an "Artistic-Scientific film" entitled Art and the Problems of Architecture: The Emergence of a New Plastic System of Architecture , an instructional film about the theory, origin and evolution of suprematism . Initially there were plans to have the film animated in a Soviet studio, but Malevich took it along on

1869-581: A reaction against Abstract Expressionism was implicit in it at the start, and is one of its most lineal continuities." The Expressionist movement included other types of culture, including dance, sculpture, cinema and theatre. Exponents of expressionist dance included Mary Wigman , Rudolf von Laban , and Pina Bausch . Some sculptors used the Expressionist style, as for example Ernst Barlach . Other expressionist artists known mainly as painters, such as Erich Heckel , also worked with sculpture. There

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1958-526: A teenager in the San Francisco Bay Area during the early 1960s, saw many exhilarating and inspiring abstract 16mm movies and nonstory noncharacter 16mm visual tone poems screened at cinematic artist Bruce Baillie 's independent, underground Canyon Cinema shows; along with some of Baillie 's own early visual motion pictures, Lucas became inspired by the work of Jordan Belson , Bruce Conner , Will Hindle , and others. Lucas then went on to enrol as

2047-469: A trip to Berlin and ended up leaving it for Hans Richter after the two had met. The style and colorfulness of Rhythmus 25 had convinced Malevich that Richter should direct the film. Due to circumstances the scenario did not get into the hands of Richter before the end of the 1950s. Richter created storyboards, two rough cuts and at least 120 takes for the film in collaboration with Arnold Eagle since 1971, but it remained incomplete. Richter had wanted to create

2136-533: A type of color organ. Eggeling happened to die a few days later. Oskar Fischinger met Walter Ruttmann at rehearsals for screenings of Opus I with live music in Frankfurt. In 1921 he started experimenting with abstract animation in wax and clay and with colored liquids. He used such early material in 1926 in multiple-projection performances for Alexander Laszlo 's Colorlightmusic concerts. That same year he released his first abstract animations and would continue with

2225-578: A way that a viewer could follow the changes in the designs when looking at the scroll from beginning to end. For a few years Eggeling and Richter worked together, each on their own projects based on these ides, and created thousands of rhythmic series of simple shapes. In 1920 they started working on film versions of their work. Walter Ruttmann, trained as a musician and painter, gave up painting to devote himself to film. He made his earliest films by painting frames on glass in combination with cutouts and elaborate tinting and hand-coloring. His Lichtspiel: Opus I

2314-532: Is a modernist movement , initially in poetry and painting , originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists have sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality. Expressionism developed as an avant-garde style before

2403-470: Is notoriously difficult to define, in part because it "overlapped with other major 'isms' of the modernist period: with Futurism , Vorticism , Cubism , Surrealism and Dadaism ." Richard Murphy also comments, “the search for an all-inclusive definition is problematic to the extent that the most challenging expressionists such as Kafka , Gottfried Benn and Döblin were simultaneously the most vociferous 'anti-expressionists.'" What can be said, however,

2492-606: Is often termed the first expressionist drama. In it, an unnamed man and woman struggle for dominance. The man brands the woman; she stabs and imprisons him. He frees himself and she falls dead at his touch. As the play ends, he slaughters all around him (in the words of the text) "like mosquitoes." The extreme simplification of characters to mythic types, choral effects, declamatory dialogue and heightened intensity all would become characteristic of later expressionist plays. The German composer Paul Hindemith created an operatic version of this play, which premiered in 1921. Expressionism

2581-417: Is that it was a movement that developed in the early twentieth century, mainly in Germany, in reaction to the dehumanizing effect of industrialization and the growth of cities, and that "one of the central means by which expressionism identifies itself as an avant-garde movement, and by which it marks its distance to traditions and the cultural institution as a whole is through its relationship to realism and

2670-411: Is the dominant aesthetic, though non-narrative film is not fully distinct from that aesthetic. While the non-narrative film avoids "certain traits" of the narrative film, it "still retains a number of narrative characteristics". Narrative film also occasionally uses "visual materials that are not representational". Although many abstract films are clearly devoid of narrative elements, distinction between

2759-494: Is to say of poetry which is truly cinematographic, has been provided us by some remarkable films, vulgarly called documentaries, particularly Nanook and Moana . According to Timothy Corrigan in The Film Experience , non-narrative film is distinct from nonfiction film, though both forms may overlap in documentary films . In the book Corrigan writes, "A non-narrative film may be entirely or partly fictional; conversely,

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2848-527: Is well-mannered." Some of the style's main visual artists of the early 20th century were: The style originated principally in Germany and Austria. There were groups of expressionist painters, including Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke . Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider, named after a painting) was based in Munich and Die Brücke (The Bridge) was originally based in Dresden (some members moved to Berlin ). Die Brücke

2937-600: The Ballets Suédois) and Clair himself. The film showed absurd scenes and used slow motion and reverse playback, superimpositions, radical camera angles, stop motion and other effects. Erik Satie composed a score that was to be performed in sync with certain scenes. Henri Chomette adjusted the film speed and shot from different angles to capture abstract patterns in his 1925 film Jeux des reflets de la vitesse ( The Play of Reflections and Speed ). His 1926 film Cinq minutes du cinéma pur ( Five minutes of Pure Cinema ) reflected

3026-664: The Cologne Werkbund Exhibition (1914) , and Erich Mendelsohn 's Einstein Tower in Potsdam , Germany completed in 1921. The interior of Hans Poelzig 's Berlin theatre (the Grosse Schauspielhaus ), designed for the director Max Reinhardt , is also cited sometimes. The influential architectural critic and historian Sigfried Giedion , in his book Space, Time and Architecture (1941), dismissed Expressionist architecture as

3115-711: The Film-Kurier . The director Herbert Seggelke was working on the abstract motion picture Strich-Punkt-Ballett (i.e. Ballet of Dots and Dashes) in 1943, but could not finish the film during the war. Mieczysław Szczuka also attempted to create abstract films, but seems never to have realized his plans. Some designs were published in 1924 in the avant-garde magazine block as 5 Moments of an Abstract Film . In 1926 dadaist Marcel Duchamp released Anémic Cinéma , filmed in collaboration with Man Ray and Marc Allégret . It showed early versions of his rotoreliefs, discs that seemed to show an abstract 3-D moving image when rotating on

3204-661: The First World War . It remained popular during the Weimar Republic , particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a wide range of the arts, including expressionist architecture , painting, literature, theatre , dance, film and music . Paris became a gathering place for a group of Expressionist artists, many of Jewish origin, dubbed the School of Paris . After World War II, figurative expressionism influenced artists and styles around

3293-479: The National Film Board of Canada 's animation unit in 1941. Direct animation was seen as a way to deviate from cel animation and thus a way to stand out from the many American productions. McLaren's direct animations for NFB include Boogie-Doodle (1941), Hen Hop (1942), Begone Dull Care (1949) and Blinkity Blank (1955). Harry Everett Smith created several direct films, initially by hand-painting abstract animations on celluloid. His Early Abstractions

3382-737: The dadaist cinéma pur movement. Abstract film or absolute film is a subgenre of experimental film and a form of abstract art . Abstract films are non-narrative, contain no acting and do not attempt to reference reality or concrete subjects. They rely on the unique qualities of motion, rhythm, light and composition inherent in the technical medium of cinema to create emotional experiences. Many abstract films have been made with animation techniques. The distinction between animation and other techniques can be rather unclear in some films, for instance when moving objects could either be animated with stop motion techniques, recorded during their actual movement, or appear to move due to being filmed against

3471-658: The "Qatsi" trilogy, which includes "Koyaanisqatsi" (1982), " Powaqqatsi " (1988), and " Naqoyqatsi " (2002). These films, scored by composer Philip Glass , offer visual experiences that examine the effects of technology, consumerism, and environmental issues on the world. Reggio's work employs techniques such as time-lapse photography and slow motion to prompt reflection on contemporary existence. Following in Reggio's footsteps, his cinematographer Ron Fricke achieved notable milestones within this approach, including "Chronos," " Baraka ," and " Samsara ." Director George Lucas , growing up as

3560-557: The 'Soirée du coeur à barbe" program in Paris. The film consisted mainly of abstract textures, with moving photograms that were created directly on the film strip, abstract forms filmed in motion, and light and shadow on the nude torso of Kiki of Montparnasse ( Alice Prin ). Man Ray later made Emak-Bakia (16 mins, 1926); L'Étoile de Mer (15 mins, 1928); and Les Mystères du Château de Dé (27 mins, 1929). Dudley Murphy had seen Man Ray's Le Retour à la Raison and proposed to collaborate on

3649-567: The 15th century onward which emphasize extreme emotion. Such art often occurs during times of social upheaval and war, such as the Protestant Reformation , German Peasants' War , and Eighty Years' War between the Spanish and the Netherlands, when extreme violence, much directed at civilians, was represented in propagandist popular prints . These were often unimpressive aesthetically but had

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3738-448: The 1910s. Italian Futurists Arnaldo Ginna and his brother Bruno Corra made hand-painted films between 1910 and 1912 that are now lost. In 1916 they published The Futurist Cinema manifesto together with Giacomo Balla , Filippo Tommaso Marinetti , Remo Chiti and Emilio Settimelli. They proposed a cinema that "being essentially visual, must above all fulfill the evolution of painting, detach itself from reality, from photography, from

3827-814: The French cinéma pur artists probably had a strong influence on newer works by Ruttmann and Richter, which would no longer be totally abstract. Richter's Vormittagsspuk (Ghosts before Breakfast) (1928) features some stop motion, but mostly shows live action material with cinematographic effects and visual tricks. It is usually regarded as a dadaist film. The clearest examples of pure cinema are said by essayist and filmmaker Hubert Revol to be documentaries. Documentary must be made by poets. Few of those within French cinema have understood that in our country, we possess innumerable elements and subjects to make, not just insignificant ribbons (of film), but splendid films lively and expressive... The purest demonstration of pure cinema, that

3916-592: The Fund For Change. Many of director Godfrey Reggio's other motion-pictures use cinematic techniques and stylistic elements he first explored in the Qatsi trilogy. The cinematic films of Koyaanisqatsi cinematographer Ron Fricke — Chronos (1985), Baraka (1992), and Samsara (2011)—are also made in a similar style. This article about an American documentary film is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Non-narrative film Narrative film

4005-507: The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881); Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944); Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890); Belgian painter James Ensor (1860–1949); and pioneering Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). In 1905, a group of four German artists, led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , formed Die Brücke (the Bridge) in the city of Dresden. This was arguably

4094-576: The UFA-Palast theater at the Kurfurstendamm in Berlin. Its 900 seats soon sold out and the program was repeated a week later. Eggeling's Symphonie diagonale , Richter's Rhythmus 21 and Rhythmus 23 , Walter Ruttmann's Opus II , Opus III and Opus IV were all shown publicly for the first time in Germany, along with the two French dadaist cinéma pur films Ballet Mécanique and René Clair's Entr'acte , and Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack 's performance with

4183-416: The capacity to arouse extreme emotions in the viewer. Expressionism has been likened to Baroque by critics such as art historian Michel Ragon and German philosopher Walter Benjamin . According to Alberto Arbasino , a difference between the two is that "Expressionism doesn't shun the violently unpleasant effect, while Baroque does. Expressionism throws some terrific 'fuck yous', Baroque doesn't. Baroque

4272-404: The centre" of expressionist music, with dissonance predominating, so that the "harmonious, affirmative element of art is banished" (Adorno 2009, 275–76). Erwartung and Die Glückliche Hand , by Schoenberg, and Wozzeck , an opera by Alban Berg (based on the play Woyzeck by Georg Büchner ), are examples of Expressionist works. If one were to draw an analogy from paintings, one may describe

4361-498: The colourful Rhythmus 25 followed similar principles, with noticeable suprematist influence of Kasimir Malevich 's work. Rhythmus 25 is considered lost. Eggeling debuted his Horizontal-vertikalorchester in 1923. The film is now considered lost. In November 1924 Eggeling was able to present his new finished film Symphonie diagonale in a private screening. On 3 May 1925 the Sunday matinee program Der absolute Film took place in

4450-450: The completion and contributed a cubist Charlie Chaplin image that was jerkily animated for the film. It is unclear if Léger contributed anything else, but he got to distribute the film in Europe and took sole credit for the film. Ray had backed out of the project before completion and did not want his name to be used. Murphy had gone back to the U.S.A. shortly after editing the final version, with

4539-434: The creation of an absolute language of form, a desire common to early abstract art. Ruttmann wrote of his film work as "painting in time". Absolute filmmakers used rudimentary handicraft, techniques, and language in their short motion pictures that refuted the reproduction of the natural world, instead, focusing on light and form in the dimension of time, impossible to represent in static visual arts. Viking Eggeling came from

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4628-436: The deal that he could distribute the film there. Avant-garde artist Francis Picabia and composer Erik Satie asked René Clair to make a short film to be shown as the entr'acte of their Dadaist ballet Relâche for Ballets suédois . The result became known as Entr'acte (1924) and featured cameo appearances by Francis Picabia, Erik Satie, Man Ray , Marcel Duchamp, composer Georges Auric , Jean Borlin (director of

4717-426: The dominant conventions of representation." More explicitly, that the expressionists rejected the ideology of realism. The term refers to an "artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person". It is arguable that all artists are expressive but there are many examples of art production in Europe from

4806-412: The expressionist painting technique as the distortion of reality (mostly colors and shapes) to create a nightmarish effect for the particular painting as a whole. Expressionist music roughly does the same thing, where the dramatically increased dissonance creates, aurally, a nightmarish atmosphere. In architecture, two specific buildings are identified as Expressionist: Bruno Taut 's Glass Pavilion of

4895-516: The film totally in Malevich's spirit, but concluded that in the end he could not discern how much of his own creativity withheld him from executing the scenario properly. Mary Ellen Bute started making experimental films in 1933, mostly with abstract images visualizing music. Occasionally she applied animation techniques in her films. Len Lye made the first publicly released direct animation entitled A Colour Box in 1935. The colorful production

4984-539: The founding organization for the German Expressionist movement, though they did not use the word itself. A few years later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in Munich. The name came from Wassily Kandinsky 's Der Blaue Reiter painting of 1903. Among their members were Kandinsky, Franz Marc , Paul Klee , and August Macke . However, the term Expressionism did not firmly establish itself until 1913. Though mainly

5073-515: The graceful and solemn. It must become antigraceful, deforming, impressionistic, synthetic, dynamic, free-wording." "The most varied elements will enter into the Futurist film as expressive means: from the slice of life to the streak of color, from the conventional line to words-in-freedom, from chromatic and plastic music to the music of objects. In other words it will be painting, architecture, sculpture, words-in-freedom, music of colors, lines, and forms,

5162-545: The idea from the Symbolist director and designer, Edward Gordon Craig ). Staging was especially important in Expressionist drama, with directors forgoing the illusion of reality to block actors in as close to two-dimensional movement. Directors also made heavy use of lighting effects to create stark contrast and as another method to heavily emphasize emotion and convey the play or a scene's message. German expressionist playwrights: Playwrights influenced by Expressionism: Among

5251-553: The late 20th and early 21st century have developed distinct styles that may be considered part of Expressionism. After World War II, figurative expressionism influenced artists and styles around the world. In the U.S., American Expressionism and American Figurative Expressionism , particularly Boston Expressionism , were an integral part of American modernism around the Second World War. Thomas B. Hess wrote that "the ‘New figurative painting’ which some have been expecting as

5340-454: The later plays of the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg (1849–1912), including the trilogy To Damascus (1898–1901), A Dream Play (1902), The Ghost Sonata (1907); Frank Wedekind (1864–1918), especially the "Lulu" plays Erdgeist ( Earth Spirit ) (1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora ( Pandora's Box ) (1904); the American poet Walt Whitman 's (1819–1892) Leaves of Grass (1855–1891);

5429-458: The lover – rhythm of soul and rhythm of legs)." About a month later the short film Vita Futurista was released, directed by Ginna in collaboration with Corra, Balla and Marinetti. Only a few frames of the film remain and little else of any Futurist Cinema work seems to have been made or preserved. Around 1911 Hans Lorenz Stoltenberg also experimented with direct animation, rhythmically piecing together tinted film in different colors. He published

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5518-757: The medium to its elemental origins" of "vision and movement". It declares cinema to be its own independent art form that should not borrow from literature or stage. As such, "pure cinema" is made up of nonstory, noncharacter films that convey abstract emotional experiences through unique cinematic devices such as camera movement and camera angles, close-ups, dolly shots, lens distortions, sound-visual relationships, split-screen imagery, super-impositions, time-lapse photography , slow motion , trick shots , stop-action, montage (the Kuleshov effect , flexible montage of time and space), rhythm through exact repetition or dynamic cutting and visual composition. Cinéma pur started around

5607-677: The painter Kandinsky he avoided "traditional forms of beauty" to convey powerful feelings in his music. Arnold Schoenberg , Anton Webern and Alban Berg , the members of the Second Viennese School , are important Expressionists (Schoenberg was also an expressionist painter). Other composers that have been associated with expressionism are Krenek (the Second Symphony), Paul Hindemith ( The Young Maiden ), Igor Stravinsky ( Japanese Songs ), Alexander Scriabin (late piano sonatas) (Adorno 2009, 275). Another significant expressionist

5696-406: The pictures separately. Mary Hallock-Greenewalt used templates and aerosol sprays to create repeating geometrical patterns on hand-painted films. These extant films were probably made around 1916 for her Sarabet color organ, for which she filed 11 patents between 1919 and 1926. The films were not projected, but one viewer at a time could look down into the machine at the film itself. The Sarabet

5785-738: The piece was completed. Fischinger's two commissions from The Museum of Non-Objective Painting did not really allow him the creative freedom that he desired. Frustrated with all the trouble with filmmaking he experienced in America, Fischinger did not make many films afterwards. Apart from some commercials, the only exception was Motion Painting No. 1 (1947), which won the Grand Prix at the Brussels International Experimental Film Competition in 1949. Norman McLaren , having carefully studied Lye's A Colour Box , founded

5874-434: The poets associated with German Expressionism were: Other poets influenced by expressionism: In prose, the early stories and novels of Alfred Döblin were influenced by Expressionism, and Franz Kafka is sometimes labelled an Expressionist. Some further writers and works that have been called Expressionist include: The term expressionism "was probably first applied to music in 1918, especially to Schoenberg", because like

5963-559: The presentation of the suffering and death of Jesus in the Stations of the Cross . Strindberg had pioneered this form with his autobiographical trilogy To Damascus . These plays also often dramatise the struggle against bourgeois values and established authority, frequently personified by the Father. In Sorge's The Beggar , ( Der Bettler ), for example, the young hero's mentally ill father raves about

6052-487: The prospect of mining the riches of Mars and is finally poisoned by his son. In Bronnen's Parricide ( Vatermord ), the son stabs his tyrannical father to death, only to have to fend off the frenzied sexual overtures of his mother. In Expressionist drama, the speech may be either expansive and rhapsodic, or clipped and telegraphic. Director Leopold Jessner became famous for his expressionistic productions, often set on stark, steeply raked flights of stairs (having borrowed

6141-436: The rendering of the visual appearance of objects, Expressionist artists sought to portray emotions and subjective interpretations. It was not important to reproduce an aesthetically pleasing impression of the artistic subject matter, they felt, but rather to represent vivid emotional reactions by powerful colours and dynamic compositions. Kandinsky, the main artist of Der Blaue Reiter , believed that with simple colours and shapes

6230-514: The same period with the same goals as the absolute film movement and both mainly concerned dadaists. Although the terms have been used interchangeably, or to differentiate between the German and the French filmmakers, a very noticeable difference is that very few of the French cinéma pur films were totally non-figurative or contained traditional (drawn) animation, instead mainly using radical types of cinematography, special effects , editing, visual effects and occasionally some stop motion . The term

6319-497: The spectator could perceive the moods and feelings in the paintings, a theory that encouraged him towards increased abstraction. In Paris a group of artists dubbed the École de Paris ( School of Paris ) by André Warnod were also known for their expressionist art. This was especially prevalent amongst the foreign born Jewish painters of the School of Paris such as Chaim Soutine , Marc Chagall , Yitzhak Frenkel , Abraham Mintchine and others. These artists' expressionism

6408-444: The style of several of the films of Ingmar Bergman . More generally, the term expressionism can be used to describe cinematic styles of great artifice, such as the technicolor melodramas of Douglas Sirk or the sound and visual design of David Lynch 's films. Two leading Expressionist journals published in Berlin were Der Sturm , published by Herwarth Walden starting in 1910, and Die Aktion , which first appeared in 1911 and

6497-686: The word expressionist was used in the modern sense as early as 1850, its origin is sometimes traced to paintings exhibited in 1901 in Paris by obscure artist Julien-Auguste Hervé, which he called Expressionismes . An alternative view is that the term was coined by the Czech art historian Antonin Matějček in 1910 as the opposite of Impressionism : "An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself... (an Expressionist rejects) immediate perception and builds on more complex psychic structures... Impressions and mental images that pass through ... people's soul as through

6586-501: The work of American artist Marsden Hartley , who met Kandinsky in Germany in 1913. In late 1939, at the beginning of World War II , New York City received many European artists. After the war, Expressionism influenced many young American artists. Norris Embry (1921–1981) studied with Oskar Kokoschka in 1947 and during the next 43 years produced a large body of work in the Expressionist tradition. Embry has been termed "the first American German Expressionist". Other American artists of

6675-435: The world. The term is sometimes suggestive of angst . In a historical sense, much older painters such as Matthias Grünewald and El Greco are sometimes termed expressionist, though the term is applied mainly to 20th-century works. The Expressionist emphasis on individual and subjective perspective has been characterized as a reaction to positivism and other artistic styles such as Naturalism and Impressionism . While

6764-457: Was Béla Bartók in early works, written in the second decade of the 20th century, such as Bluebeard's Castle (1911), The Wooden Prince (1917), and The Miraculous Mandarin (1919). Important precursors of expressionism are Richard Wagner (1813–1883), Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), and Richard Strauss (1864–1949). Theodor Adorno describes expressionism as concerned with the unconscious, and states that "the depiction of fear lies at

6853-423: Was a dominant influence on early 20th-century German theatre, of which Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller were the most famous playwrights. Other notable Expressionist dramatists included Reinhard Sorge , Walter Hasenclever , Hans Henny Jahnn , and Arnolt Bronnen . Important precursors were the Swedish playwright August Strindberg and German actor and dramatist Frank Wedekind. During the 1920s, Expressionism enjoyed

6942-493: Was active for a longer period than Der Blaue Reiter, which was only together for a year (1912). The Expressionists were influenced by artists and sources including Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh and African art . They were also aware of the work being done by the Fauves in Paris, who influenced Expressionism's tendency toward arbitrary colours and jarring compositions. In reaction and opposition to French Impressionism, which emphasized

7031-547: Was an Expressionist style in German cinema, important examples of which are Robert Wiene 's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Paul Wegener 's The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920), Fritz Lang 's Metropolis (1927) and F. W. Murnau 's Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922) and The Last Laugh (1924). The term "expressionist" is also sometimes used to refer to stylistic devices thought to resemble those of German Expressionism, such as film noir cinematography or

7120-600: Was an extremely influential aspect of absolute film, and one of the biggest elements, other than art, used by abstract film directors. Absolute film directors are known to use musical elements such as rhythm/tempo, dynamics, and fluidity. These directors sought to use this to add a sense of motion and harmony to the images in their films that was new to cinema, and was intended to leave audiences in awe. In her article "Visual Music" Maura McDonnell compared these films to musical compositions due to their careful articulation of timing and dynamics. Expressionism Expressionism

7209-593: Was coined by filmmaker Henri Chomette , brother of filmmaker René Clair . The cinéma pur film movement included Dada artists, such as Man Ray , René Clair and Marcel Duchamp . The Dadaists saw in cinema an opportunity to transcend "story", to ridicule "character," "setting," and "plot" as bourgeois conventions, to slaughter causality by using the innate dynamism of the motion picture film medium to overturn conventional Aristotelian notions of time and space. Man Ray's Le Retour à la Raison (2 mins) premiered in July 1923 at

7298-487: Was commissioned to promote the General Post Office . Oskar Fischinger moved to Hollywood in 1936 when he had a lucrative agreement to work for Paramount Pictures . A first film, eventually entitled Allegretto , was planned for inclusion in the musical comedy The Big Broadcast of 1937 . Paramount had failed to communicate that it would be in black and white, so Fischinger left when the studio refused to even consider

7387-408: Was compiled around 1964 and contains early works that may have been created since 1939, 1941 or 1946 until 1952, 1956 or 1957. Smith was not very concerned about keeping documentation about his oeuvre and frequently re-edited his works. Cinéma pur ( French: [sinema pyʁ] ; lit.   ' pure cinema ' ) was an avant-garde film movement of French filmmakers, who "wanted to return

7476-534: Was described as restless and emotional by Frenkel. These artists, centered in the Montparnasse district of Paris tended to portray human subjects and humanity, evoking emotion through facial expression. Others focused on the expression of mood rather than a formal structure. The art of Jewish expressionists was characterized as dramatic and tragic, perhaps in connection to Jewish suffering following persecution and pogroms. The ideas of German expressionism influenced

7565-489: Was edited by Franz Pfemfert . Der Sturm published poetry and prose from contributors such as Peter Altenberg , Max Brod , Richard Dehmel , Alfred Döblin , Anatole France , Knut Hamsun , Arno Holz, Karl Kraus , Selma Lagerlöf , Adolf Loos , Heinrich Mann , Paul Scheerbart , and René Schickele , and writings, drawings, and prints by such artists as Kokoschka , Kandinsky, and members of Der blaue Reiter . Oskar Kokoschka 's 1909 playlet, Murderer, The Hope of Women

7654-499: Was finalised in 1975 and is recognised as a precursor to Godfrey Reggio 's " Koyaanisqatsi " (1982). Very little had been said about the importance of this short film. Nevertheless, it was the spark from which a visual revolution occurred in documentary filmmaking. The non-linear and not-narrative documentary current found its world recognition with Godfrey Reggio. He is a filmmaker known for his exploration of various themes related to human life and society. Amongst his works stand out

7743-470: Was first publicly demonstrated at John Wanamaker's New York department store in 1922. Some of the earliest abstract motion pictures known to survive are those produced by a group of artists working in Germany in the early 1920s: Walter Ruttmann , Hans Richter , Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger . Absolute film pioneers sought to create short length and breathtaking films with different approaches to abstraction-in-motion: as an analogue to music, or as

7832-778: Was first screened in March 1921 in Frankfurt. Hans Richter finished his first film Rhythmus 21 (a.k.a. Film ist Rhythmus ) in 1921, but kept changing elements until he first presented the work on 7 July 1923 in Paris at the dadaist Soirée du coeur à barbe program in Théâtre Michel . It was an abstract animation of rectangular shapes, partly inspired by his connections with De Stijl . Founder Theo van Doesburg had visited Richter and Eggeling in December 1920 and reported on their film works in his magazine De Stijl in May and July 1921. Rhytmus 23 and

7921-467: Was used for the works of a group of filmmakers in Germany in the 1920s, that consisted, at least initially, of animated films that were totally abstract. The French term cinéma pur was coined to describe the style of several filmmakers in France in the 1920s, whose work was non-narrative, but hardly ever non-figurative. Much of surrealist cinema can be regarded as non-narrative films and partly overlaps with

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