"[WAX EXPERIMENTS] was ... carefully chosen to represent the variety of ways Fischinger used the sliced wax. First is a sequence of pure wax imagery ... then follows a longer sequence composed of two fragments showing wax imagery combined with overlays of animated circle patterns, and a few moments of pure circle animation (presumably drawn on paper) which were edited in; this sequence makes use of positive and negative images as well as forward and backward printing of the same image. Finally a brief sequence shows some thin line animation similar to that in STUDY 1 and 2 superimposed over a wax background.
"The wax-sliced imagery has a rare beauty and complexity and softness matched only by the later films of Jordan Belson (who, by the way, had never seen any of Fischinger's wax films). It is a shame that Fischinger never returned to this technique during his mature period, although a number of late paintings (Space Spiral, Vortex, Space Abstraction, etc.) show that he kept the feelings and textures of these extraordinary films in mind." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture, Nos. 58-60 (1974)
1921-1923, 16mm, tinted color/si, 9m, $30
"Thousands of feet, mostly positive, few negative, survive of STAFFS ... which, like WAX EXPERIMENTS, covers a variety of different experiments made with roughly the same technique during the Munich period.
"All of them are characterized by the basic imagery of hard-edged parallel bars moving up and down in rhythmic patterns; all were, I believe, prepared with cut-outs from paper or wood .... We see in this film as many as five superimposed layers of imagery, each containing its own separate flowing movement.
"The editing ... is marvelously complex .... This virtuoso visual montage complexity is also seen in [SPIRITUAL CONSTRUCTIONS], SPIRALS, and other films of the Munich period, and seems to be related to Fischinger's ideas of cosmic experience and consciousness." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1923, 16mm, tinted color/si, $48
"Like STAFFS, numerous reels of SPIRALS survive, many of them duplicate copies of simple footage intended as background elements in more complex films ....
"The first two sequences are so much alike that I have little doubt they were once part of the same finished film. They show scenes basically composed of concentric circular, spiral and radiating patterns moving in such ways that they produce optical illusions of great depth leading off into an eternally distant vanishing point. The editing, like that of STAFFS, contains some two frame intercutting, but primarily concentrates on clever alternations of sequences which suggest point-of-view of a first person camera, as in the superimposition of static dark circles over the dizzying whirlpool to create the feeling that the spectator is actually flying into some infinite vortex. This powerful sequence is a worthy predecessor to the magnificent vortex-eye of RADIO DYNAMICS." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1926, 16mm, b&w/si, 4m, $20
"In the summer of 1927, Fischinger walked from Munich to Berlin carrying his camera and equipment in a back-pack. Along the way, he took single-frame images of certain people and landscapes he encountered. The resultant film survives in a single consistent 100 meter negative copy, of which the last fourth had been cut off by Fischinger himself and placed in one of the cans designated as first priority for transfer to safety film. Fortunately the cut was in the middle of a cluster of similar frames, so I was able to recognize and rejoin the two pieces, and transfer them to a 16mm safety negative." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1927, 16mm, b&w/si, 4m, $20
"The title R-1, EIN FORMSPIEL VON OSKAR FISCHINGER survives on two different films, one composed entirely of STAFFS ... and one composed of small fragments of many different experiments - wax, model planets, atoms, etc. - including a great deal of STAFFS footage. For convenience, I will use the title R-1 to refer to this second, mixed film which appears to be a revised version of the first ....
"R-1 probably was a tinted film, and to further extrapolate from the large number of tinted fragments that survive (and also the large number that must have been used in the making of the Gasparcolor tests) it may well have been the multiple-projector film Fieber which was mentioned several times in 1926 and 1927 in letters and newspaper articles." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
This film is a 1993 recreation by William Moritz and the Fischinger Archive, and is not Fischinger's original edit.
ca 1927, 16mm, tinted color/si, 7m, $22
"The film is a 'meditation on violence' and into it Fischinger poured all his loathing of the German penchant for drunkenness and aggression which he had been able to witness firsthand since his early childhood at the family brewery-inns. But at the same time he infuses the film with a serene sense (or experience) of consciousness which manifests itself constantly in new guises - now as a slow-motion animation (perhaps, by the way, the first use of this technique) of a man being kicked out of doors; now as a pair of heads that change themselves into everything from a Neanderthal man to the Munich Paulaner-Thomasbrau logo; now as the method of appearance, disappearance and warping of the ordinary furniture of life; now as the intrusion of alligators and ostriches and other impossible exotica; etc. - that finally transmutes the classic clown-pratfalls into a metaphysical instrument of celebration." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
ca 1927, 16mm, b&w/si, 10m, $30
"For the music to this film, Fischinger chose a popular foxtrot, 'I've Never Seen a Smile Like Yours,' that had appeared as a number in an American musical feature, The Perfect Alibi. Fischinger transforms the dance into a fantastic abstract ballet, in which two levels of 'dancers' flow past and through each other: regular and orderly groups of thin-line, hard-edged figures (unmistakably male and female) which move in patterned configurations reminiscent of Busby Berkeley's later choreography, and extremely fluid, plastic figures which constantly change their consistency and size - fluttering, surging, swirling, melting across the screen like drops of water liberated from the laws of nature." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1930, 16mm, b&w/so, 3m, $20
"This little gem, next to STUDY NO. 8 the best of the black and white studies, combines a jolly popular air with a clear statement of the profound mystical imagery exploited in Fischinger's later works, especially RADIO DYNAMICS.
"The music is a fandango, 'Los Verderones' by Jacinto Guerrero, and the figures truly dance to the catchy rhythms, but beyond the barest requirements of choreography, there are two consistent patterns of interwoven imagery - one of flying objects in the warping currents of space (either inner or outer), and the second of the eye as a center of focus - half target, half mandala giving off waves of vibrations. These two images (represented by broad, fluid forms sweeping across the frame in fluctuating clusters) are linked by a pattern of dots that split like atoms again and again, sometimes seeming like a dynamic interchange between matter and space, and sometimes like darting points of focus or fragmentation of vision by the cosmic eye." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1930, 16mm, b&w/so, 2m, $20
"LIEBESSPIEL has a classical simplicity unique among Fischinger's work, with a clear sense of phrasing, development and beautiful spatial construction which mark it as his most perfect transcreation in a visual format of the basic musical ideas of melody and harmonies as they might occur in a song or lyrical air. It is significant in this respect that his efforts here were apparently not tied down to a specific piece of music, but rather bent on re-creating in visual terms certain pure concepts best known otherwise through music.
"The action is frankly and simply erotic, in the way tantric mandalas are often sensuous in expressing the yin-yang, male/female duality principle. The reproductive conclusion is exquisitely beautiful in its balanced form." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1931, 16mm, b&w/si, 2m, $20
"For STUDY NO. 7, Fischinger found in Brahms' 'Hungarian Dance No. 5' a perfect vehicle for his optical experiments. On one hand, the sharp, fast rhythms are an ideal counterpoint for Fischinger's first complete exploration of absolute darkness as a space matrix, with hard-edged shapes twisting, flickering and curving through it, rushing past the viewer, razor thin, with astounding illusions of depth. On the other hand, the sensuous gypsy violins are played off against soft but solid shapes that curl about each other with rich geometric languor. Altogether the images are an excellent culmination of the basic visual concepts Fischinger had been working out in the first six studies, wherein the figures gain a modicum of interest in themselves, but function primarily as tracers of complex space constructs. Conceived, charted and executed like the rest of the black and white studies with thousands of separate charcoal drawings on paper, the classically simple effects here are no less amazing in their own way than the astounding multiplicity of STUDY NO. 8." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1931, 16mm, b&w/so, 2.5m, $20
"... Fischinger did not have enough money to buy the rights for the second half of Dukas' 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice.' Despite the lack of the finished ending of the music, this study remains the most complex, most stunning, and for the artist the favorite and most important of the black and white films.
"Fischinger makes no attempt to tell Goethe's story of the magician's helper (Disney was to do that ten years later) but instead he uses the textures and movements of the sounds themselves as the jumping off point for creating an especially rich world in which a multiplicity of forms and movements perform in a deep environment." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1931, 16mm, b&w/so, 4m, $20
"This was the first film of Oskar's work which was worked on by someone else, in this case, his brother Hans. The basic designs for forms and movements were all [made] by Oskar, and Hans was assigned to complete the sequences, filling in the shadings on the outlined shapes as an apprentice, learning exercise.
"The images in STUDY NO. 9 are synchronized with Brahms' 'Hungarian Dance No. 6,' probably in response to the success of STUDY NO. 7. The graceful figures perform charming choreography which makes STUDY NO. 9 one of the most pleasing of the series. The most memorable moment is a sequence in which dots and rays bounce off a semi-circle, flickering and dividing in conscious interplay with their own after-images, a further extension into pure optics of Fischinger's ideas about atom-splitting." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1931, 16mm, b&w/so, 3m, $20
"KOLORATUREN (COLORATURA) was commissioned by Froelich Film as a trailer to [its] feature Gitta Discovers Her Heart, starring a popular operetta singer ... Gitta Alpar. One hears Gitta singing, but sees only Fischinger's abstract designs ....
"The film was ordered as a rush job, and had to be delivered in three weeks. Fischinger locked himself in and worked steadily, completing it on time. Yet despite the rush, it shows no lack of care, no signs of haste. It is just as complicated and detailed as the other black and white studies, in fact containing the most sensational sequence in the whole series - the whirlpool and wipes that accompany the final high note." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1932, 16mm, b&w/so, 2m, $20
"Oskar Fischinger had begun working on the ballet music from Verdi's opera A�da about the same time as his work on 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' for STUDY NO. 8. Family affairs and commercial business interrupted the work late in 1930, and the charcoal drawings for the first minute of the film lay idle for several months until later in 1931 when Oskar's younger brother Hans was assigned to fill out and execute the rest of the piece.
"Although following the plans Oskar had already charted, Hans tended to render the shapes with the sharper, more streamlined style he had worked out on STUDY NO. 9. Furthermore, he went back over some of Oskar's charcoals and added details with grey tempera. The result is an exciting synthesis of the styles of the two artists - Oskar's loose, flexible and soft images with Hans' tight, hard-edged images." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1932, 16mm, b&w/so, 4m, $20
"The elegant music of the minuet from Mozart's 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik' provides a slow, luxurious and refined showcase for Fischinger's rococo spatial movements which emerge as ribbon-like strips undulating, furling and uncoiling, less like 'dancers' than the figures in some of the other studies, and more like actual manifestations of the music itself." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1932, 16mm, b&w/so, 4m, $20
"STUDY NO. 12 is pure Hans Fischinger. ... Hans' streamlined, eel-like figures execute slow movements to the 'Torch Dance' from Rubinstein's Bride of Corinth. The leisurely pacing makes this an excellent companion-piece to Oskar's STUDY NO. 11. A comparison will remind us (among other observations already noted with STUDY NO. 9 and NO. 10) that Hans tends to treat the screen as a relatively flat area with the figures moving on a shallow stage or plane surface, whereas Oskar handles the screen as a window opening on deep, dark space with figures moving through it in three dimensions." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1932, 16mm, b&w/so, 4m, $20
Made with Gaspar Color (a 3-color process pre-dating Technicolor) which Fischinger helped to invent, Kreise was one of the first European color films. The film was an ad film commissioned bythe Tolirag agency. Various product shots were later added onto the end to advertise chocolate and other items. Fischinger removed the Tolirag logo and made a purely abstract version. (Cindy Keefer, Center for Visual Music)
Music: Grieg and Wagner.
1933, 16mm, color/so, 3m, $20
Music: Bayer's "Doll Fairy." A commercial for Muratti cigarettes.
1934, 16mm, color/so, 3m, $22
Color reconstruction from original gouache paintings.
1934, 16mm, color/si, 2m, $20
"COMPOSITION shares the same jolly atmosphere as the commercials, but whereas each of Fischinger's previous films had utilized only one basic animation technique, COMPOSITION IN BLUE bursts forth with half a dozen different new techniques - mostly involving pixilation of three-dimensional forms ....
"The basic format of the film centers around solid objects moving about in an imaginary blue room. Fischinger delights in setting up conditions so that the audience makes associations with probable or 'real' everyday happenings, and then extending the analogy beyond the limits of possibility, bursting the bubble of the audience's credibility. In the opening scene, Fischinger is careful to show the red cubes entering the 'room' through a door, so we will identify with this as a plausible situation. Then he subtly introduces a mirror as the 'floor' to the room, again gaining our confidence in this special but logical reality. Then, at the climax of the film, a cylinder pounds on the mirror-floor and creates circular ripples as if the floor had suddenly turned to water, something that pushes us, with a rush of delight, out of the realm of reality into a joyous world of sheer, absurd fantasy." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1935, 16mm, color/so, 4m, $22
Music: Mozart's "Turkish Rondo." A commercial for Muratti cigarettes.
1935, 16mm, b&w/so, 3m, $20
"Visually, ALLEGRETTO is very rich indeed. Fischinger's fascination with the new (to him) technique of cell animation led him to experiment with multi-layered see-through constructions which are more diverse and complex on the surface than those in most of his other films. At the same moment, one sees a background pattern of two overlapping concentric radiating circles, comet-like figures, sparkling and stretching diamonds, a row of teeth-like triangles gliding down one side of the frame like a liberated soundtrack, and other sensuous or mechanized motifs, each moving independently. The colors are California colors - the pinks and turquoise and browns of desert sky and sand, the orange of poppies, and the green of avocados. The figures work themselves up into a brilliant and vigorous conclusion, bursting with skyscrapers and kaleidoscopes of stars/diamonds, and every facet of the chic Hollywood design of the thirties. It is a celebration, plain and simple, of the American lifestyle, seen fresh and clean through the exuberant eyes of an immigrant." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1936, 16mm, color/so, 3m, $20
"Fischinger felt very depressed about the Disney Studios, and recalled in a very negative light the factory production methods, prescribed style, hyper-conservative taste and failure to experiment that he had encountered there. ... Ironically, AN AMERICAN MARCH, the first film he completed after his job on Fantasia, is the most Disney-like of all his works, with the representational image of the American flag dominating the film.
"Fischinger used the common Disney style of hard-edged, outlined figures painted on cells, but he carried the technique far beyond Disney's limits and made it an integral part of the meaning of the film. Fischinger has chosen to discuss the idea of America as a melting pot, and he shows this literally by causing the elements in the film - form and color - to melt." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1940, 16mm, color/so, 3m, $20
"I believe this to be Fischinger's best film, the work in which he most perfectly joined his craftsmanship with his spiritual ideas into a meaningful and relatively faultless whole. No music distracts from the visual imagery which moves with sufficient grace and power of its own.
"The film has the structure of yoga itself: We see first a series of exercises, only exercises for the eyes or the sense of vision - fluctuating and stretching rectangular objects; then we see a statement of two icons representing meditation, one an image of flight into an infinite vortex defined by finite movement, and the other an image of two eyes' irises opening and expanding/ contracting while between them grows a third eye of inner/cosmic consciousness. After a brief introductory exposition of these three themes, each is repeated in a longer, developed version, the exercises working themselves up into complex stroboscopic flickers, and the hypnotic rhythms of the expanding/contracting eyes unite with the motion of the passing rings of the vortex, making the flight become a two-way, inward and outward, flight with the vortex as the eye of the observer as well as the eye of the universe." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1943, 16mm, color/si, 4m, $20
"The oil-on-plexiglass technique of MOTION PAINTING NO. 1 has been described in the main text. By all odds so delicate and difficult a process for a ten-minute film might well have resulted in a failure or a weak film. At one point, Fischinger painted every day for over five months without being able to see how it was coming out on film, since he wanted to keep all conditions, including film stock, absolutely consistent in order to avoid unexpected variations in quality of image. Thus it is a tribute to Fischinger's skill and artistic vision that MOTION PAINTING NO. 1 turned out, in fact, excellent.
"Volumes could be written about this film which stands in length and complexity as Fischinger's major work. It is perhaps the only one of his films which is truly and completely (or purely) abstract (or absolute). Its images are actors in a complex being which modulates and transforms itself before our eyes, an object and an experience at the same time, something we must feel and contemplate, and meditate through." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1947, 16mm, color/so, 11m, $35
"The MUNTZ TV commercial was painted in the same technique as MOTION PAINTING NO. 1 (but consciously limited to shades of black, white and grey), and at its best moments, with the same vigor and brilliance." - Dr. William Moritz, Film Culture
1952, 16mm, b&w/so, 2m, $20