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|
| Festival Year |
Festival Section |
| 2011 |
The Birth of Anime: Pioneers of Japanese Animation |
| Film Title |
AN EXPRESSION |
| Alternative Title 1 |
|
| Alternative Title 2 |
|
| Alternative Title 3 |
|
| Country |
Japan |
| Release Date |
1935 |
| Production Co. |
|
| Director |
Shigeji Ogino |
| Format |
|
Speed (fps) |
| 35mm |
|
16 |
| |
|
|
| Footage |
|
Time |
| 385 ft. |
|
3' |
| Archive Source |
National Film Center, Tokyo |
| |
|
| Print Notes |
Senza didascalie / No intertitles. |
| Other Credits |
| anim., prod: Shigeji Ogino |
| |
| Program Notes |
| These three abstract films, screening in prints blown up from 9.5mm originals, typify Ogino’s experimental style. They are exercises in pure cinema not unlike the films of Oskar Fischinger, whose Composition in Blue (Komposition in Blau) was made in the same year. Rhythm simply depicts patterns of lines in rhythmic motion. Propagate uses the theme of the growth of plant seeds as a peg on which to hang Ogino’s abstract imagery, and may have been inspired by contemporary avant-garde poster art. An Expression depicts the motion of geometric forms, and was shot in colour using a two-colour additive process which employed red and green filters in imitation of the Kinemacolor process devised by British pioneer George Albert Smith in 1906. Hand-painting in red and green was also used, and the print was projected at 32 frames per second, twice the regular 16fps projection speed of the original Pathé Baby print, to achieve the best visual effect. (An approximation of 30 fps will be attempted at the Pordenone screening if the theatre projector’s variable speed mechanism permits.) The three films won prizes at the First International Competition of Small-Gauge Films in Budapest in 1935. -- ALEXANDER JACOBY & JOHAN NORDSTRÖM |
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