23 Facts About Oskar Fischinger

1.

Oskar Wilhelm Fischinger was a German-American abstract animator, filmmaker, and painter, notable for creating abstract musical animation many decades before the appearance of computer graphics and music videos.

2.

Oskar Fischinger created special effects for Fritz Lang's 1929 Woman in the Moon, one of the first sci-fi rocket films, and influenced Disney's Fantasia.

3.

Oskar Fischinger made over 50 short films and painted around 800 canvases, many of which are in museums, galleries, and collections worldwide.

4.

In Frankfurt, Oskar Fischinger met the theatre critic Bernhard Diebold, who in 1921 introduced Oskar Fischinger to the work and personage of Walter Ruttmann, a pioneer in abstract film.

5.

Oskar Fischinger invented a "Wax Slicing Machine", which synchronized a vertical slicer with a movie camera's shutter, enabling the efficient imaging of progressive cross-sections through a length of molded wax and clay.

6.

Oskar Fischinger wrote to Ruttmann about his machine, who expressed interest.

7.

In 1924, Oskar Fischinger formed a company with American entrepreneur Louis Seel to produce satirical cartoons that tended toward mature audiences.

8.

Finally, in an effort to escape bill collectors, Oskar Fischinger decided to surreptitiously depart Munich for Berlin in June 1927.

9.

Oskar Fischinger soon was creating special effects for various films.

10.

Oskar Fischinger produced a series of abstract Studies that were synchronized to popular and classical music.

11.

In 1932, Oskar Fischinger married Elfriede Oskar Fischinger, a first cousin from his hometown of Gelnhausen.

12.

Oskar Fischinger continued to make films, and commercials and advertisements, among them Muratti greift ein, for a cigarette company, and Kreise, for the Tolirag advertising agency.

13.

Oskar Fischinger managed to complete his abstract work Komposition in Blau in 1935.

14.

An agent from Paramount Pictures telephoned Oskar Fischinger, asking if he was willing to work in the United States, and Oskar Fischinger promptly agreed.

15.

Oskar Fischinger prepared a film which was originally named Radio Dynamics, but known today as Allegretto, tightly synchronized to Ralph Rainger's tune "Radio Dynamics".

16.

Oskar Fischinger requested to be let out of his contract and left Paramount.

17.

Oskar Fischinger then redid and re-painted the cels and made a color version to his satisfaction which he then called Allegretto.

18.

Frustrated in his filmmaking, Oskar Fischinger turned increasingly to oil painting as a creative outlet.

19.

Three of Oskar Fischinger's films made the 1984 Olympiad of Animation's list of the world's greatest films.

20.

The Academy Film Archive has preserved many of Oskar Fischinger's films, including Motion Painting No 1, Squares, and Spirals.

21.

Oskar Fischinger had hoped to make the Lumigraph a commercial product, widely available for anyone, but this did not happen.

22.

Oskar Fischinger gave several performances in Los Angeles and one in San Francisco in the early 1950s, performing various classical and popular music pieces, and many were impressed by the machine's spectacular images.

23.

In February 2007 Barbara Oskar Fischinger performed on the original Lumigraph in Frankfurt, and in 2012 in Amsterdam.