If there is one DVD that has given me more out and out pleasure this year than CMV’s compilation of Oskar Fischinger films, I can’t think of it. I know that I have written about these films before but they can certainly stand up to my little posts (by the way, the title above links to the Center for Visual Music.s website, where you can purchase the video).
I had grand plans this week of writing about Godard’s films as I whittle my way through them accompanied by Richard Brody’s excellent new book, Everything is Cinema, because I would have the time. Well, time is a fickle beast and instead I find myself watching and rewatching some films from this same dvd.
Well, I guess I am bad at counting, because in the ten films I never actually went back to the page marked early films as I did a couple of days ago and started watching Walking from Munich to Berlin. Here Fischinger took a three week walk from the two cities during the prolonged economic collapse of the late twenties (the film is from 27).
Fischinger records what is in front of him but only for a few seconds at a time (and some much less than that). What we get is a collage of the German countryside book-ended by the two urban areas. You would think from the conceit of the idea or some of Fischinger’s latter films that the program might not have a humanist perspective, being more concerned with the abstracted space in front of his camera. What makes the film unique is the juxtaposition of Fischinger’s use of space and time with the record of the everday people that he took the time to film on his trip, usually right in front of his camera, each person providing a flash portrait.
The faces and landscapes are remarkable, and to see them interacting with Fischinger’s more aesthetic concerns is a marvel. This is what experimental film should be, I thought while watching because this is what vision is like, little snatches, sometimes peripheral, sometimes head on but always a direct result of someone seeing. They reminded me, in their own way, of David Hockney’s photo collages, where the mutiplicity of perspectives create one POV, the viewers.
Also be sure to check out OskarFischinger.org, another great sight for the artist.
