Optical Poetry - Quite some time ago I stumbled upon an amazing animated silhouette film - and now I’ve rediscovered the work!
Oskar Fischinger was a German painter, illustrator, and animator. In the late 20s he worked at the gigantic Ufa Studios in Germany, at one point working on special effect rocketry for Fritz Lang’s Frau Im Mond. The above film, which was made some time before 1930 and the original score for which is now lost, is called Seelische Konstruktionen, and contains some of the most captivating animation I have ever seen. As stated, the music put to it obviously isn’t the original music. It’s by the band Liquid Liquid from the early 80s, and it seems to fit quite nicely. It adds an equivocal tribal semblance; raw and mantra-like. The last couple seconds of animation seem to end abruptly, perhaps the copy it was taken from had the very end missing, or the person who uploaded it cut it off. But for some reason those last two or three seconds sent a shiver down my spine the first couple times I saw them. It has the same effect on me as do the most powerful moments of Kafka's diary; a nebulous sense of expurgated tragedy.
The Maniacal Satire of Phil Mulloy
This guy is the contemporary William S. Burroughs of hand-drawn animation! A brilliant satirist employing a genuine syntax of over-the-top violence, eroticism, and societal criticism all wrapped up in a turgid editing style. You gotta’ love it.
The Sound of Music, 1992
