Rhythmus 25 | 2010 | MS Paint/Computer Animation->16mm | 1:30
Synopsis
A remake of a lost Hans Richter film from 1925. A film hand-painted in Microsoft Paint.
Artist Statement
I constructed my film based on the following research by Richard Suchenski:
Richter began work on his final abstract film, eventually titled Rhythmus 25, late in 1923. After creating a scroll, Orchestration der Farbe (Orchestration of Color, 1923), that he could use as a model, Richter hand-painted every frame of the film, using colour as another contrast to heighten the tension of the movement of squares, lines, and bands. Since the hand-colouring was extremely expensive, Richter produced only one film print which, unfortunately, has not survived. In an unpublished monograph, however, Richter explains his intended colour scheme for the film:
Between green and red are all the colors, as between black and white is all the light. The scientifically denominated elementary colors, blue, red, and yellow, do not have, aesthetically speaking, an absolute distance from each other. Red and yellow are nearer (warm); blue is opposite of yellow as well as of red; whereas green and red are incomparably unequal to each other… All other colours I consider more or less variations.1
Rhythmus 25 was premiered at the “First International Avant-Garde Film Exhibition” held in 1925 at the UFA Theatre Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin.2
Screenings/Exhibitions
June 9, 2019. Ciné-concert: D’un monde à l’autre, Ciné 104, Pantin, France. (Live music composed by Gaëtan Cavazzini.)
July 17, 2012. Everything is 3D, Open City Cinema, Winnipeg, Manitoba.
June 8, 2012. Kill Your Idols, Deep Leep Microcinema, Heaven Gallery, Chicago, Illinois. Curated by Jesse Malmed.
March 14, 2012. Kill Your Idols, Deep Leep Microcinema, Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn, New York. Curated by Jesse Malmed.
November 3 – 6, 2011. Punto Y Raya Festival, Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid, Spain.
- Hans Richter, Hans Richter by Hans Richter, edited by Cleve Gray (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 85. [↩]
- Richard Suchenski, “Hans Richter,” Senses of Cinema 49 (February 2009). [↩]