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Tate Modern Film

Optical Poetry: Oskar Fischinger retrospective

1 June 2012 at 20.00–22.00
Oskar Fischinger Allegretto 1936-1943 JJ12

Oskar Fischinger Allegretto 1936–43

© Fischinger Trust courtesy Center for Visual Music

This special screening celebrates the opening of Tate Modern’s display devoted to Oskar Fischinger’s Raumlichtkunst, Center for Visual Music’s new restoration and recreation of Fischinger's 1920s multiple-projector performances. The screening includes restored 35mm prints of landmark films including Allegretto, Composition In Blue, Kreise, Motion Painting no. 1, Spirals, Studies 6, 7 and 8, Walking from Munich to Berlin and more. Fischinger (1900–1967) was one of the masters of animated film and an influential pioneer of abstract cinema. Beginning his career in Weimar Republic Germany during the early 1920s, he redefined abstraction through dazzling films that explore the effects of sight, visual sound and motion as a spiritual pursuit, consistent with his interest in theosophy and Buddhism. This programme offers a rare chance to see Fischinger’s classic ‘visual music’ films.

Oskar Fischinger is one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, embracing the abstraction that became the major art movement of that century, and exploring the new technology of the cinema to open abstract painting into a new Visual Music that performs in liquid time.
William Moritz

Introduced by Cindy Keefer, Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles.
Presented in association with Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles.

Tate Film presents inspiring films, videos, installations and performances made by artists and filmmakers who seek to challenge the conventions of the moving image. See the full Tate Film programme. Tate Film is sponsored by Maja Hoffman / LUMA Foundation.

Tate Modern

Starr Cinema

Bankside
London SE1 9TG
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1 June 2012 at 20.00–22.00

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