Imagine the night on September 23, 1926, when the first feature animation, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, was screened in Berlin. In a time when people were accustomed to motionless paintings and sculptures, and movies were still a novelty, what would it have felt like to have the shadow puppet scenes of Prince Achmed soaring through the sky on horseback, and the wizard performing magic unfold in front of your eyes? Since 24 frames are needed per second, this 67-minute-long piece requires around 250,000 photographs. In fact, Lotte Reiniger took three years from 1923 to 1926 to completed this work, shooting and editing 250,000 photographs of the silhouette dolls that she made and animated. Though it must have been an arduous journey, Reiniger recollected, "Those were the days with each new film we could make new discoveries… The whole field was virgin soil and we had all the joys of explorers in an unknown country."
MMCA Film and Video's 《Movement Making Movement: An Unknown Country》 screens through 10 programs, 55 major works by five artists who, like in Lotte Reiniger's recollection, 'explored an unknown country'. The Star of Bethlehem and Helen La Belle, Rotte Reiniger's color films produced in the 1950s, show that since she started working with silhouette animations, she continued making new experiments for exquisite and rich expressions. Len Lye has shown a multifarious artistic spectrum from his first work Tusalava to his posthumous work Tal Farlow. Oskar Fischinger's work that include Wax Experiments, Allegretto, and Motion Painting no. 1 will be divided into 'Early Films' and 'Color Films' and screened in two separate programs. Karel Zeman's feature films, Invention for Destruction and The Fabulous Baron Munchausen, will be screened in digitally remastered versions. And with Norman McLaren, early short films to later works such as Pas de deux and Synchromy will be introduced, and in particular, Neighbours that was inspired by the Korean War and its state of division will be screened.
Active during the socially unstable times of the 1st and 2nd World Wars and the Great Depression, they moved to unfamiliar cities, countries and continents in search of opportunities and possibilities. With life itself an exploration, they vigorously pioneered 'unknown country' in the realm of art as well. They created films that were never seen before using newly explored techniques and devices, and as a result, opened up a world of brilliant colors and sounds, and created a fantasy world of fairytale in which characters and objects rhythmically came to life. Neither the work process nor the research process would have been easy. Through this screening, let us join the five artists in their journey to a new world of contemplation, exploration, discovery, and joy.
