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Opus IV (film)

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Opus IV
Directed byWalter Ruttmann
Release date
  • 1925 (1925)
Running time
4 minutes
CountryGermany

Opus IV is a 1925 German absolute film directed by Walter Ruttmann. The film is approximately 3m 55s in length.[1] It uses abstract animation.

The film is the final installment in the “Lichtspiel” (German for “light show”). The Opus films are famous for using geometric shapes, basic lines, and abstraction to create optical images,[2] then taking the optical art, along with rhythm and editing, to imply movement. Along with the Film Ist Rhythm series, the Lichtspiel film series is one of the earliest examples of absolute film.[3] Those films contain a stronger resemblance to paintings than their other Absolute counterparts.[4]

Release

Opus IV (1925)

On 3 May 1925 the Sunday matinee program Der absolute Film took place in the UFA-Palast theater at the Kurfurstendamm in Berlin. Its 900 seats soon sold out and the program was repeated a week later. Viking Eggeling's Symphonie diagonale, Hans Richter's Rhythmus 21 and Rhythmus 23, Walter Ruttmann's Opus II, Opus III and Opus IV were all shown publicly for the first time in Germany, along with the two French dadaist cinéma pur films Ballet Mécanique and René Clair's Entr'acte, and Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack's performance with a type of color organ.[5][6] Eggeling happened to die a few days later.

Adaptation

An adaptation of Opus IV has been proposed in 2023.[7] In said version, some of Ruttmann's shapes have been made transparent, and video frames depicting the moon have been overlapped. A soundtrack has also been added, and the video has been sped up to match the duration of the soundtrack.

References

  1. ^ "Walter Ruttmann - Lichtspiel: Opus IV (1925) on Vimeo". Archived from the original on April 18, 2019. Retrieved November 29, 2018.
  2. ^ https://monoskop.org/images/e/e4/Le_Grice_Malcolm_1979_German_Abstract_Film_in_the_Twenties.pdf [bare URL PDF]
  3. ^ Cowan, Michael (2013). "Absolute Advertising: Walter Ruttmann and the Weimar Advertising Film". Cinema Journal. 52 (4): 49–73. doi:10.1353/cj.2013.0038. JSTOR 43653148. S2CID 191561990.
  4. ^ Norden, Martin F. (1984). "The Avant-Garde Cinema of the 1920s: Connections to Futurism, Precisionism, and Suprematism". Leonardo. 17 (2): 108–112. doi:10.2307/1574999. JSTOR 1574999. S2CID 192322086. Project MUSE 600297.
  5. ^ "Deutsches Institut für Animationsfilm | Blog Detailseite". May 26, 2016. Archived from the original on May 26, 2016.
  6. ^ Horak, Jan-Christopher. "Discovering Pure Cinema: Avant-Garde Film in the 1920s". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  7. ^ "Opus'stinatus IV". Youtube. Retrieved February 21, 2023.


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