Motion Painting No. 1 (1947). 11 minutes. Directed and painted by Oskar Fischinger.
Motion Painting No. 1 is an abstract expressionist film in which, through stop-motion photography, experimental artist Oskar Fischinger creates a series of layered, painted geometric shapes that appear to move by themselves on a plexiglass surface. The film is not the first to feature solely abstract shapes (for other examples, see Synchromy No. 4: Escape [1937] by Mary Ellen Bute, or Kaleidoscope [1935] by Len Lye); it is also not the first film in this milieu that Fischinger himself created. But Motion Painting No. 1 is considered not only to be a crowning achievement in Fischinger’s career but also to be a landmark intersection between oil painting and the big screen. Of course, an abstract expressionist aesthetic—even in a movie that is lauded as one of the greats—can be challenging to appreciate, especially when its audience is accustomed to watching narrative film. Fortunately, as a sort of