Early Abstractions #1-5, 7, 10

Early Abstractions  #1-5, 7, 10
Early Abstractions  #1-5, 7, 10

1939/1956, USA, 16 mm, colour, sound, 23 min.

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 labours 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.
No. 1: Hand-drawn animation of dirty shapes - the history of the geologic period reduced to orgasm length.
No. 2: Batiked animation, etc. etc. The action takes place either inside the sun or in Zurich, Switzerland.
No. 3: Batiked animation made of dead squares, the most complex hand-drawn film imaginable.
No. 4: Black-and-white abstractions of dots and grill-works made in a single night.
No. 5: Color abstraction. Homage to Oscar Fischinger - a sequel to No. 4.
No. 7: Optically printed Pythagoreanism in four movements supported on squares, circles, grill-works and triangles with an interlude concerning an experiment.
No. 10: An exposition of Buddhism and the Kabala in the form of a collage. The final scene shows Aquatic mushrooms (not in No. 11) growing on the moon while the Hero and Heroine row by on a cerebrum.

Harry Smith from Film-makers’ Cooperative Catalogue 3, pp. 57-58