Scott Bartlett’s film OffOn (1967) — screening in its original 16mm format on Wed. April 14, 2010 — is a pioneering work of both visual music and electronic cinema, fusing film and video in a way never before achieved.  Regardless of the intellectual folderol , it is an extraordinarily powerful (and psychedelic) piece of filmmaking [...]

Now best remembered for his 1927 feature film, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, at the beginning of the decade Walter Ruttmann created some of the earliest German abstract films amidst the same Munich art community as Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling.  Edition Filmmuseum recently issued a PAL-format set of two DVDs gathering all of [...]

Symphonie Diagonale (1924)

Initially a Cubist, the painter Hans Richter went on to become one of the founding members of the Zurich branch of the Dada art movement.  After moving to Munich in 1919 with his partner Viking Eggeling, together the artists began to explore form as rhythm in their work, initially in a series of theoretical writings [...]

This is a wonderful segment about Mary Ellen Bute from the Oct. 24, 1999 episode of a British TV program called Dope Sheet.  (A “dope sheet” is a planning document used by animators.)  It includes comments from Cecile Starr, John Canemaker, and Scorsese’s favorite editor Thelma Schumacher, who did her first work with Bute.
On Saturday, [...]