Rhythmus 21

Country: GERMANY Year: 1924 Duration: 3 mins.

Synopsis: It is not the natural movement of film that gives the objects their expression, but rather the artistic movement – that is to say, a rhythmical movement regulated by itself in which variations and pulsations form a part of the artistic design.

Credits:

Direction: Hans Richter

Age Classification: M/12

Rhythmus 23

Country: GERMANY Year: 1924 Duration: 4 mins.

Synopsis: ‘RHYTHMUS 23’ (1923) is constructed entirely out of the interplay between square shapes and diagonal lines, and the underlying architectonic principle is geometric symmetry. In the opening, for example, two white squares move toward each other along a symmetric path until they “fuse” into a larger one, before breaking apart into shrinking squares that careen off diagonally. At the end of the film, the sequence reappears, but this time with black squares moving against a white background.

Credits:

Direction: Hans Richter

Age Classification: M/12

Symphonie Diagonale

Country: GERMANY Year: 1924 Duration: 7 mins.

Synopsis: ‘Symphonie Diagonale’ (1924) is one of the first abstract films and the only surviving one by this author. With its straight lines and simple curves, the film attempts to create a language built on basic elements, a kind of sign writing found in the artist’s paintings, which echo Paul Cézanne’s art. It is a poem of rhythmic forms, referencing a visual music implicit in the title. In contrast to the horizontal sense of Western musical notation, the work proposes a diagonal rupture.

Credits:

Direction: Viking Eggeling

Music: interpretada ao vivo por Filipe Raposo

Age Classification: M/12

Lichtspiel Opus II

Country: GERMANY Year: 1921 Duration: 3 mins.

Synopsis: ‘OPUS II’ (1921) could be characterized as a battle between, on the one hand, a circle and harmonious curved shapes and, on the other hand, aggressive black triangles that emerge from the top of the screen, chasing away undulating shapes.

Credits:

Direction: Walter Ruttman

Music: interpretada ao vivo por Filipe Raposo

Age Classification: M/12

Lichtspiel Opus III

Country: GERMANY Year: 1923 Duration: 4 mins.

Synopsis: In ‘OPUS III’ (1924), the triangles are replaced by blunt rectangles, expanding and repelling curved shapes. As the film progresses, its content becomes increasingly rigid due to the interaction of geometric shapes such as squares, rectangles and parallelograms. The movements become more mechanical and the shapes act like pistons, organic pumps beating to the rhythm of a heart.

Credits:

Direction: Walter Ruttman

Music: interpretada ao vivo por Filipe Raposo

Age Classification: M/12

Lichtspiel Opus IV

Country: GERMANY Year: 1925 Duration: 4 mins.

Synopsis: ‘OPUS IV’ (1925) begins in a surprising way, using horizontal bands moving one another. At their greatest intensity, they are neither symbolic nor kinetic, but optical, having more in common with the Op Art of the 1960s than with the geometric abstraction of the 1920s (in this sense close to ‘Anemic Cinema’ (1926) by Duchamp). When vertical bands are added to the horizontal bands, the measurement becomes frenetic, as in a train, but the speed is perceived by the eyes and not by the body.

Credits:

Direction: Walter Ruttman

Music: interpretada ao vivo por Filipe Raposo

Age Classification: M/12

Le Ballet Mécanique

Country: FRANCE Year: 1924 Duration: 19 mins.

Synopsis: ‘Ballet Mécanique’ (1924) was a step towards the discovery of the filmic object instead of the script. In it, the object is completely liberated from its rational, anecdotal and symbolic meanings, which allowed the film to be built on the object's plastic value alone, without worrying about its current meaning. One of the first films to be acclaimed as avant-garde, it presents an exuberant, determinedly low-tech fantasia on the machine age—whirling pastry whisks, pumping pistons, and all.

Credits:

Direction: Fernand Leger

Age Classification: M/12

Entr'Acte

Country: FRANCE Year: 1924 Duration: 24 mins.

Credits:

Direction: René Clair, Francis Picabia

Age Classification: M/12