1930s

Former dance hall queen Cleo Borden, newly rich, falls for and pursues an upper-crust Englishman.Read More »

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“While German absolute filmmakers often drew on J. S. Bach for their understanding of form, Bute derived hers from mathematician Joseph Schillinger, as the SYNCHROMY series show. The visuals are reflections and refractions of light from glass colanders. The music is Wagner’s O’Evening Star – a Venus statue represents the star.” – R. Bruce ElderRead More »

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“Weinberg’s second personal film is a poetic evocation of an absent lover as imagined by the central female character, whom Weinberg loved and sought to marry. Very sophisticated editing adds to the misty cinematography. Happily, actress Erna Bergman accepted Weinberg’s proposal soon after she saw the film.” – Robert A. HallerRead More »

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Light plays over the surfaces of paper cut-outs, abstract shapes with curved lines. The movement of the light (which are small spots) speeds up, following the rhythms of the piano accompaniment. A small spot opens and closes; Shadows sometimes dominate. The lights, movement, and music take on a mechanical mood. Then, the opening images return.Read More »

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Collaboration with Melville Webber and Ted Nemeth. Premiered at Radio City Music Hall, 1935. In the RHYTHM IN LIGHT, the artist uses visual materials as the musician uses sound. Mass and line an brilliant arabesques from the inexhaustible imagination of the artist perform a dance to the strains of Edvard Grieg’s music. The visual and aural materials are related both structurally and rhythmically – a mathematical system being used to combine the two means of expression. (Promotional flyer, Ted Nemeth Studios)Read More »

Aspiring singer Susanne takes over for ham actor Viktor at a small cabaret in Berlin where he works a woman impersonator and per chance she’s discovered by an agent, who thinks, that she really is a man. She becomes famous, but her situation becomes troublesome, when she falls in love with Robert. imdb.Read More »

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A tone poem [in which] two woodland sprites dance about, atop power lines and among flowers and leaves, while being pursued. Everyone spends some time pulling levers to switch trains, too.
“Anthony Gross is best known as a printmaker and painter. The animated films he made with American Hector Hoppin reflect his distinctive graphic style, but add a sophisticated choreography of lines and space. The escapist theme of the film developed from an earlier suite of etchings called SORTIE D’USINE (1931).” – David CurtisRead More »

A short made by Joseph Cornell in the late 1930s– An ode to imagination, travel and literature. In true Cornellian fashion, the film borrows footage from, among other films, a Burton Holmes travelogue; Sightseeing tours of Dutch Marken and agrarian Asia therefore become the dream of a boy at a bookstall.Read More »

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A Bronx morning is a portrait of a place and time, simultaneously a documentary, an avant-garde experiment, and an amateur film–although its compositional beauty and complex editing disguise that it is a 21-year old’s first attempt at moviemaking. Architectural abstractions are only part of Leyda’s portrait. The film soon naturalizes its abstractions into a vibrant vision of children’s games and adult commerce on the summer streets of the Bronx, the New York borough northeast of Manhattan.Read More »