AllMovie

A specific type of avant-garde cinema that purposely avoids traditional narrative structure and devices such as plot and character development. Instead, these films try to communicate with the audience through purely visual expressions, attempting to impact the viewer psychologically rather than consciously. Many abstract films convey emotions through color, rhythm, geometric patterns, lines and shapes, repetitive images, and movement. This effect is usually achieved through animation or by manipulating the film itself by scratching, drawing, and painting on its surface or with unique methods of processing. The movement has its origins in Germany during the ‘20s, when abstract painters Viking Eggeling and Hans Richter started drawing lines and shapes on film in such works as Rhythmus 21 and Rhythmus 25. The trend continued through the ‘30s with such filmmakers as Man Ray (L'Etoile De Mer) and Ralph Steiner (H2O). It briefly resurfaced in the ‘50s and ‘60s, with the works of such artists as Bruce Connor, Ian Hugo and Francis Thompson, but soon gave way to the underground movement. Recently, experimentation with shapes derived from computer technology (fractals, for example) has resurrected the style yet again.