Martin Arnold’s films use segments of old American cartoons, from which he has obscured and deleted features in order to focus viewer attention on the sound, repetition and movement of specific and recurring forms.
This months featured cartoon of the month is by the German animator Lotte Reiniger who pioneered the comprehensive use of silhouette animation. The Tale of the Grasshopper and the Ant (1954) uses musical synchrony (and Mozart) for dramatic emphasis, self-reflexively begging a comparison between the necessity of storing food as winter approaches to the need for music and dance as emotional supports for life.
This month’s feature animator is Oskar Fischinger, a German abstract animator, filmmaker and painter who held several interesting ties to early animation developments in Germany as well as major American feature animations.
Lotte Reiniger was a German animator who adapted the art of shadow-plays to film, pioneering and perfecting the technique of silhouette animation using her own inventions.