Viking Eggeling Diagonal Symphony USA, 1921-1924,7 mins, 16mm

Harry Smith Early Abstractions USA,1939-56, 23 mins, 16mm

John Latham Speak UK, 1968-69, 11 mins, 16mm

The works in this list deal in various ways with visual abstraction. Many of these are the product of artists working directly on 8mm or 16mm film, rather than using a camera, in order to paint or scratch the stock; others use video processes and electronic or digital feedback in order to generate abstract patterns of shape and colour.

See also:
ANIMATION
FLICKER & STROBE
HAND-PAINTED

JULIE ANGEL
LFOS ON PLANET X
UK, 1995, 15 mins, video
A stunning trance film which explores the boundaries between science and technology. Shimmering iridescent colours and 'samples' taken from Super-8 film are woven together to mesmeric effect. The images are fluidly edited to music, composed by the film maker herself, creating syncopated moments of sheer beauty.

EDOUARD BEUX
ALBIMES
France, 1981, 10mins, video
Abstract patterns caused by video feedback trace infinitely regressing visual paths.

BILL BRAND
RATE OF CHANGE
USA, 1972, sound, colour, 18 mins, 16mm
Slow continuously shifting colours, cycling around the perimeter of a spectrum. This section has no original, no frames. It is a continuous strip of changing colour causing an acceleration of colour perception. It functions as an axiom, a colour correction. - B.B.

'By its suppression of any conventional developmental articulation, Rate of Change effectively reveals the basic modality of the film experience: temporal process.' - Ian Christie.

BEVERLY & TONY CONRAD
STRAIGHT AND NARROW
USA, 1970, sound mag stripe, B&W, (with subjective colour), 10 mins, 16mm
'A stroboscopic film of unusual intensity, by the maker of the classic strobe film The Flicker. - Whitney Museum of America Art Announcement.

Straight and Narrow is a study of subjective colour and visual rhythm, although it is printed on black and white film, the hypnotic pacing of the images will cause most viewers to experience a programmed gamut of hallucinatory colour effects. Through the intermediary of rhythm, the maximal impact is drawn from the simplest of universal human images: straight horizontal and vertical lines.

'Set to a strong percussive musical background, rapidly alternating images of black and white straight lines are juxtaposed in precise rhythmic patterns to create specific colours... if you can watch without becoming hypnotised...' - NY Daily News.

'[...] I love 'Straight and Narrow'... as a pure abstraction of feeling, in a Mondrian-mood structured hypnotically mind-changing, at the same time attacking our visual sensibilities and our optic nerves. And we see colours of the MIND exploding and dissolving in straight and narrow fleeting pictures, cubes, lines, rectangles, overcuttings, dissolves, pannings, flickering happenings...'Lil Picard, 'Inter-VIEW'.

GILL EATHERLEY
HAND GRENADE
UK, 1971, sound, colour, 8 mins, 16mm three-screen
Three screens of riotous abstraction, powered by a Neu! soundtrack.

" Malcolm Le Grice helped me with Hand Grenade. First of all I did these stills, the chairs traced with light. And then I wanted it to all move, to be in motion, so we started to use 16mm. We shot only a hundred feet on black and white. It took ages, actually, because it's frame by frame. We shot it in pitch dark, and then we took it to the Co-op and spent ages printing it all out on the printer there. This is how I first got involved with the Co-op." - Gill Eatherley, interview with Mark Webber, 2001

VIKING EGGELING
DIAGONAL SYMPHONY
USA, 1921-1924, silent, B&W,7 mins, 16mm.
One of the first totally abstract films related to his work with scrolls, a search for a precise visual language of motion. A forerunner of modern abstract and concrete film direction. One of the most beautiful films, and one of the most important ones, from that period.

JOHN GOFF
RADIO IMAGE
UK, 1989, 4 mins, video
Electromagnetic rays are visualised with the help of a cathode ray tube and a computer as Goff makes the sound of electromagnetic radiation visible in order to achieve an innovatory techno-abstraction.

JOHN GRUENBERGER
INFLORESENCE
USA, ?, sound, colour, 7 mins, 16mm
" This film was made without the use of a motion picture camera. Strips of geometric patterns, moire patterns and various precisely repeated designs were applied to the film stock and solarised. These images were then printed in positive and negative colour through special printing techniques...the pattern overlay combined with strong complimentary colours creates a three dimensional effect." - Science News.

GOH HARADA
LAMPENSCHWARZ
Japan, 2003, silent, B&W, 12 mins, 16mm
' Black surface made with black pigment meets white surface created by the projection lamp. The film Lampenschwarz was made solely by manual work only using black pigment (Lampenschwarz), transparent glue and blank film. These materials were brought onto the transparent film with the tips of the fingers, frame by frame. This film shows 17,000 of these different black and white images through the rapid speed of the projector, thus creating black and white movements.' - G.H.

IAN HELLIWELL
RECTANGULAR MOTION
UK, 2000, 4 mins, video
An abstract film derived from coloured inks applied onto clear super 8; sprocket holes from different gauges of film were used as stencils, leaving behind hard-edged rectangular shapes amongst the swirling patterns of ink.

Screened: 32nd Rotterdam International Film Festival Jan 2003

RICCARDO IACONO
SKZCP
UK, 1997, sound, colour, 3 mins, 16mm and video
An abstract kinetic light sculpture / visual music composition, with synchronised drum ‘n’ bass soundtrack by FlyFace. Composed of colours, textures and shapes painted directly onto 16mm film and manipulated using  an optical printer. Free flowing, organic and visceral. Intricately edited and syncopated by the movement of reflected and refracted light on the film surface.
AN ANIMATE! FILM

TAKAHIKO IIMURA
IRO (COLOURS)
Japan, 1962-3, sound, colour, 11 mins, 16mm
sound by Yasunao Tone.
" A striking experiment in colour in which paints are transformed in oil and water, in which melting waxes are mixed, the result being a metamorphosis from one colour to the next." - Donald Richie, written for a program note 1966.

DENYS IRVING
69
UK, 1969, silent, B&W, 8 mins, 16mm

JOHN LATHAM
SPEAK
UK, 1968-69, sound, colour, 11 mins, 16mm
Is his second attack on the cinema. Not since Len Lye's films in the thirties has England produced such a brilliant example of animated abstraction. Speak burns its way directly into the brain. It is one of the few films about which it can truly be said, "it will live in your mind". - Ray Durgnat.

BOB LAWRIE
NO NO RELAXATION
UK, ?, 6 mins, video
No No Relaxation is a short video synchronised to music by Derek Higginson. The images are various random geometric compositions deteriorated through Xerox processing onto film and then modified on transfer to video tape.

LEN LYE
COLOUR FLIGHT
New Zealand, 1938, sound, colour, 4 mins, 16mm
Music "Honolulu Blues" by Red Nicholas and his Five Pennies.
Len Lye chose a tune in which he captures and translates the pulsation (rhythm) in a cocktail of colour. We are treated to an "eye nash", which even today seems fresh (or which they don't make like that anymore.)

LEN LYE
FREE RADICALS
USA, 1979, sound, B&W, 4 mins, 16mm
In Free Radicals Len Lye put aside his interest in colour and concentrated on a stark, black and white use of the 'direct' method by scratching on black leader. He has described the film as 'white ziggle - zag - splutter scratches...in quite doodling fashion'.

The film is a masterly poetic expression of Len Lye's lifelong concern with movement, as a celebration of energy.

The film's title is a reference to modern physics - "free radicals" are particles of energy - but the visual style is still reminiscent of tribal art.

When it was first produced in 1958, it was an award-winning film at the International Experimental Film Competition at the 1958 Brussels World Fair. Len Lye recomposed the film in 1979, producing a tighter four minute version.

WILLIAM MORITZ
ABSTRACTIONS: JUDE
USA, 1970, sound, colour, 2 mins, 16mm
A visual ritual. Images moved and moving as abstractions or the process of abstraction. Brown art. A portrait of seeing someone. With Jude and Fracoise Lewandowski. Photographers James Brownfield, Robert Curtis (Cisco), and William Moritz.

ANNABEL NICOLSON
SHAPES
UK, 1970, silent, colour, 16 fps, 7 mins, 16mm.
Abstract exploration from the textural and plastic sources. The colours, shapes and rhythms of the original elements have been developed into a lyrical abstract vision by means of refilming from the screen, superimposition, stop-frame projection, editing and by an exploration of the incidental tactile process of the film i.e. dust particles.
Part of SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT

PAT O'NEILL
7362
USA, 1965-67, sound, colour, 6 mins, 16mm
Sound: Joseph Byrd, Michael Moore; Picture: Pat O'Neill. A bilaterally symmetrical (west to east) fusion of human, biomorphic and mechanical shapes in motion. Has to do with the spontaneous generation of electrical energy. A fairly rare (ten years ago) demonstration of the Sabattier effect in motion. Numbered after the film stock of the same name.

"Fetishistic." - Isabella Beeton

"...an 'absolute' film in Richter's and Ruttman's sense - pure circles of light bounce on black screens. They establish not only the rhythm of the film but the terms in which the subsequent brilliant colour images - derived through multiple and extreme high-contrast printing from an oil pump in motion and a dancing girl - should be viewed. In four parts, the film leads to a almost sexual climax at the end, making subtle use at the moment of a strobe." - David Curtis.

WILLIAM RABAN
DIAGONAL
UK, 1973, sound, colour, 6 mins, 16mm three-screen
"Diagonal is a film for three projectors, though the diagonally arranged projector beams need not be contained within a single flat screen area. This film works well in a conventional film theatre when the top left screen spills over the ceiling and the bottom right projects down over the audience. It is the same image on all three projectors, a double-exposed flickering rectangle of the projector gate sliding diagonally into and out of frame. Focus is on the projector shutter, hence the flicker. This film is 'about' the projector gate, the plane where the film frame is caught by the projected light beam."
(William Raban, Perspectives on British Avant-Garde Film catalogue, 1977)

LIS RHODES
DRESDEN DYNAMO
UK, 1974, sound, colour, 5 mins, 16mm
'This film is the result of experiments with the application of Letraset and Letratone onto clear film. It is essentially about how graphic images create their own sound by extending into that area of film which is 'read' by optical sound equipment. The final print has been achieved through three, separate, consecutive printings from the original material, on a contact printer. Colour was added, with filters, on the final run. The film is not a sequential piece. It does not develop crescendos. It creates the illusion of spatial depth from essentially, flat, graphic, raw material.' - Tim Bruce

HARRY SMITH
EARLY ABSTRACTIONS #1-5, 7, 10
USA,1939/56, 23 mins, 16mm
The seven films that make up Early Abstractions are spliced together to be projected as a unit. "My movies are made by God; I am just the medium for them." Harry Smith "Smith's films can be watched for pure color enjoyment, or for motion - Harry Smith's films never stop moving - or you can watch them for hidden and symbolic meanings, alchemical signs." - Jonas Mekas

"My cinematic excreta is of four varieties: - batiked abstractions made directly on film between 1939 and 1946, optically printed non-objective studies composed around 1950, semi-realistic animated collages made as part of my alchemical labors of 1957 to 1962, and chronologically superimposed photographs of actualities formed since the latter year. All these works have been organised in specific patterns derived from the interlocking beats of the respiration, the heart and the EEG Alpha component and should be observed together in order, or not at all, for they are valuable works, works that will live forever- - they made me gray." - H.S.

ETTILIE WALLACE
MOODS IN MOTION
USA, 1954, sound, colour, 5 mins, 16mm
'In 1954, while working for the Kinesis distribution organization in San Francisco, Chistopher Maclaine was introduced to a San Diego newspaperwoman, Ettilie Wallace, who had produced an abstract motion picture utilizing images created by her "kaleidolight" box, an affair composed of coloured lights and revolving plastic forms. Miss Wallace was looking for a composer to add a music track to her film, and Maclaine offered his services, composing a score for drum, flute, and human voice. The completed film was entitled Moods in Motion.' – Robert Pike

BRUCE WOOD
EDGE FORCES
USA, 1976, silent, B&W, 11 mins, 16mm
Edge Forces is an abstract collage of rapid nebulous forms and calligraphic lines. he frame is used as a 'canvas' for thousands of fleeting images that try to expand beyond its confines. Viewers are compelled either to comprehend the dynamic flow of images, or to make free subjective associations with them. - B.W.

'Bruce Woods films are among the most sensual of any 'abstract' animated work ever made. Projected, they generate a fluid stream of organic images in a carefully controlled post-cubist space comparable to the work of painters like Jackson Pollock. Viewed one frame at a time (which is the way much of the footage is shot), they recall the rich lines and textures of such master etchers as Rembrandt. Wood's use of camera movement during exposure of each individual frame - like drawing - together with the illusion of movement in projection make his films both beautiful and unique.' - Bill Judson, Curator of Film, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh.