There was a documentary about Harry Smith around 2008-2009.. in the San Francisco film festival..about his times with Ginsberg, and his work in saving rare 78's, as during WWII they were being melted down. There's a great book out that got me here...called Harry Smith The Avante Garde in the American Vernacular. Fabulous that you posted this.
"@callaviejachocha Google "cutout animation" - think collage + stop motion. He shot this in 1957, so there's nothing too sophisticated going on in terms of technology… just lots and lots and lots of creativity." These days there seems to be a tendency to associate cutout animation with Terry Gilliam or something resembling his work, when in fact, the technique had been around much longer than the show it was made famous in. I feel like Harry Smith gets discounted simply because the approach he used might seem rather quaint by today's standards (especially with the way digital advances in art, design and animation have advanced to the point such a film like this may seem like a simple exercise, though I'm sure these took many hours, days, weeks or even months to do. My favorite of these is #7 with it's use of multiple camera passes needed to render the individual patterns of colored light on display in the 5 minute piece.
Wow, this stuff is interesting. I had no idea it was around that long. I wonder what it all means... I bet you could have an entire class on this stuff.
@callaviejachocha Google "cutout animation" - think collage + stop motion. He shot this in 1957, so there's nothing too sophisticated going on in terms of technology… just lots and lots and lots of creativity.
Is this still the score of Teiji Ito? For the other three Early Abstractions I recognized the music from Shamanic Principles of Ito. Here I am not so sure any more.
i feel as though part 4 doesn't quite fit in with parts 1-3, i think the film could have ended successfully with part 3 (the strongest part in my opinion), this is interesting and amusing to watch though
