CVM Collections: Access and Distribution - Film, Video, Digital Media

CVM provides access to Visual Music, abstract cinema and experimental animation through a variety of activities. This page provides information on:

• Curated Film Programs: Optical Poetry: Oskar Fischinger Retrospective, Mary Ellen Bute, Baerbel Neubauer, Legendary Light Shows, and 3 NEW Essential Visual Music Programs - Rare Classics, New Visions and Early Pioneers programs. Plus lectures and presentations.
• Online Store (research copies on video and DVD)
• Selected print rentals and archival loans
• On-site Research
• Licensing for Museum Exhibitions

For Other Information on Special Collections (Paper, Monograph and other materials), please visit our Collections and Archives page. For research material, you may wish to start with our Online Library.

• Featuring 35mm prints of Fischinger's classic visual music films, including Allegretto, Study No. 6, Study No. 7, Radio Dynamics, Composition in Blue, Motion Painting No. 1, Kreise, American March, Spirals, Coloratura, Spiritual Constructions, Walking from Munich to Berlin, and others. Most are preserved or new prints. Provided in association with the Fischinger Archive. Includes prints preserved by Academy Film Archive, Center for Visual Music and Fischinger Archive, with the support of Film Foundation, Sony, Cinémathèque québécoise and Deutsches Filmmuseum.
• Program is approx. 70 minutes, 35mm

Rental is subject to conditions including the screening of the complete show, with no re-ordering or re-assembling. Qualified institutions must certify that they do not use a platter projection system and are capable of archival projection standards. See bottom of page for notes on qualified institutions.* The prints are generally not rented separately. This program cannot be provided on video or DVD.

Essential Visual Music: Rare Classics - NEW Program, May 2008

From German pioneers to Light Show psychedelia to Experimental Animation classics, rare and preserved prints from the Center for Visual Music Archive. Includes films by Oskar and Hans Fischinger, Charles Dockum, Jules Engel, Mary Ellen Bute, light show films and more. 16mm, 80 mins. Please read the full program description. Recently presented at UCLA Film and Television Archive/Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Reviewed by Danni Zuvela in "The Musicality of the Moving Image" in realtime onscreen, Brisbane: "... consciousness-expanding variety of psychedelia and its various cinematic and machinic iterations by generations of artists, filmmakers and scientists. The incredible Rare Classics program, curated by GoMA guest Cindy Keefer of the Center for Visual Music in LA, was a prime example of the kaleidoscopic approach to moving abstraction by numerous artists in the early-to-mid 20th century. The Rare Classics program abounded with priceless opportunities to witness the genre's often-referred-to-but-rarely-seen works, such as John Stehura's pioneering (1960-1965) computer animation, Cibernetik 5.3, Jud Yalkut's decidedly brown-acid Turn, Turn, Turn (1966) and some mind-blowing footage from early expanded cinema performances. Along with the unforgettable experience of witnessing the 'recreation' film of Oskar Fischinger's R-1 ein Formspiel (c1926-1933), from his 1920s (!) multiple-projector performances … there was extraordinary conservation footage of Charles Dockum's 1952 MobilColor Performance at the Guggenheim Museum.

Essential Visual Music: New Visions- New Program, 2008

Contemporary work in Visual Music and Abstract Animation, digital and 16mm, Approx 80 minutes.. Please read the full program description

 

Jordan Belson: FIlms Sacred and Profane - please inquire re conditions for screening. 16mm and digital. CVM's Belson Retrospective programs have been presented recently at MOCA Los Angeles, Rotterdam Film Festival, GoMA Brisbane Australia's Visual Music festival, and the European Media Art Festival, Osnabruck, Germany.

Mary Ellen Bute Program

Includes all of Bute's Abstract Films. Known for her pioneering early abstract films (some of which were screened regularly at Radio City Music Hall, New York in the 1930s), and one of the first artists to use oscilloscopes, she is also known for her collaborations with Norman McLaren and Leon Theremin, among others. Program features all of her short abstract films. 16mm prints. Rhythm in Light, 1934; Synchromy No. 2, 1935; Dada, 1936; Parabola, 1937; Escape, 1937; Spook Sport (with animation by Norman McLaren), 1939; Tarantella, 1940; Polka Graph, 1947; Color Rhapsody, 1948; Imagination, 1948; New Sensations in Sound, 1949 (RCA Commercial); Pastorale, 1950; Abstronic, 1952 and Mood Contrasts. Organized by CVM in association with Cecile Starr and Women's Independent Film Exchange. 16mm. Recently screened in Los Angeles, Chicago, Ithaca New York, Australia and Germany.

 

Legendary Light Shows (16mm and video)

Flashback to the 1960's with a program of rarely seen film and video by legendary light show artists from San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles: Glenn McKay, Tony Martin, Elias Romero, Joshua White, Single Wing Turquoise Bird, Jud Yalkut and others, plus the light show finale excerpt from David Lebrun's Hog Farm Movie. Featuring light, color and liquid projections layered with film and handmade slides, originally performed live at rock concerts. Selections from this program were featured in the 2005 US exhibition "Visual Music" at the Hirshhorn Museum and MOCA LA. This program screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, 2006, San Francisco in August 2008 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Cornell Cinema 2008, and at various other venues. Program approx. one hour. 16mm and video; includes new preservation print of Yalkut's Turn, Turn, Turn.

Legendary Light Show images - Top, courtesy Elias Romero, Joshua White, Tony Martin. Bottom, from Single Wing Turquoise Bird, courtesy Peter Mays

Time and Tides - Music Paintings by Baerbel Neubauer (35mm and DVD, 75 min. program)

• Featuring 35mm prints of Neubauer's direct on film animations (approx 26 minutes), plus New Digital work, 2004-present.
• 

  Algorithmen (1994, 3:17)
  Falter-Spot 7 (1994, 0:30)
  Roots (1996, 3:40)
  Mondlicht (Moonlight) (1997, 4:11)
  Holiday (1998, 4:30)
  Feuerhaus (Firehouse) (1998, 5:20)
  Passage (2002, 8:02)

• 
• Flockenspiel I-IV (2004, DVD): ...an associative journey from 2D to 3D through abstract digital images and music. The images were digitally handpainted with brushes of colours, forms and effects. (BN). The Soundtrack for Flockenspiel III was also painted digitally. 25 minutes, screened on DVD. Gallery of Flockenspiel images
• Plus excerpt(s) from her new digital works-in-progress.

NOTE: The 35mm prints may be rented as a separate program, without the digital work. As of Sept. 2008, Algorithmen is currently only available digitally, not currently on 35mm, pending lab work.

This program recently screened at The Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland

Essential Visual Music: Early Pioneers - NEW Program

Early Visual Music Pioneers: Eggeling, Ruttman and Richter, all 16mm. Films include: Ruttmann's Opus I, II, III and IV (1921-25); Eggeling's Symphonie Diagonale, Richter's Rhythmus 21, Rhythmus 23, Filmstudie, Ghosts Before Breakfast, Inflation, Everything Turns, Race Symphony and Two-Penny Magic; plus Cecile Starr's documentary Richter on Film (1972, 14 min). All b/w except Richter on Film documentary, color. Curated by, and presented in association with, Film historian Cecile Starr.

Other Programs and Lectures

• Illustrated Talk by Ms. Keefer of CVM: Raumlichtkunst to Vortex: Early Expanded Cinema Experiments of Oskar Fischinger and Jordan Belson (presented at Tate Modern, April 2009). Powerpoint and 35mm.
• Screening and Lectures: Music for the Eyes, selections of old and new Visual Music films ("greatest hits"), presented in 2008-09 at UC Riverside, USC, Cal Arts and UCLA Media/Arts.
• Illustrated Presentation: Projected Light and Color: Early Visual Music Color Organs and Light Shows (presented at British Film Institute/Optronica Festival, London, 2007). Powerpoint, 16mm and DVD lecture.

From the first known colour organ experiments in the 1700s, to Oskar Fischinger's multiple projector light shows of the mid 1920s, through to some legendary 1960s light shows; key examples of visual music's long, rich but little known history will be explored in this talk. Presented by Cindy Keefer from the LA based Center for Visual Music and illustrated by slides and rare film footage, the talk contextualises colour organs and light shows as precursors to modern VJ and audiovisual culture. (from Optronica Festival Program)

• Inquire re the Alexander Alexeieff/Claire Parker program (North America, Asia only), 16mm.

Also see our previous programs including:

Visual Music 1 (screened at MOCA)

Visual Music 2 (screened at LA Filmforum)

 

Booking inquiries: Email Center for Visual Music cvmaccess(at)gmail(dot)com

Please provide details including whether your organization is a nonprofit or for-profit organization; date(s) and number of screenings requested; size of screening room (seats). Please note, we do not rent to individuals, only to qualified organizations.*

We cannot provide these curated Film Programs for exhibition on DVD (exceptions include Neubauer's new films, on PAL DVD; and selected new work from the New Visions program).

For other recent Visual Music programs curated and presented by CVM, please see our Screenings page; for details regarding our work and films in the 2005 Visual Music exhibition at MOCA LA and Hirshhorn/Smithsonian, please see Visual Music films

2. Online Store

CVM's online Store offers Research Copies of films on video and DVD. These are for private home use or classroom use only, and most may not be exhibited publicly for a paying audience, or used in museum exhibitions or public screenings without additional permissions, fees and/or licenses. Please inquire if you wish to obtain permission for additional uses. These DVDs, videos and books are also available for purchase via telephone, or at our downtown Los Angeles offices.

3. Print loans and rentals

Under certain conditions, CVM provides access to selected prints from our preservation projects through rentals to qualified institutions. Some of these include:

• Films by Jules Engel (Accident, Three Arctic Flowers, Celebration, Mobiles, Play Pen, Times Square, Coaraze, Landscape). FIlm only, not available on video or DVD at present.
• Charles Dockum films (1952 Mobilcolor Performance at the Guggenheim; 1966 Mobilcolor Documentary and Performance films; 1970 extended Mobilcolor Performance film).
• John Stehura's Cibernetik 5.3 (currently available only on videotape or DVD)
• Selected Fischinger 35mm prints including Radio Dynamics

4. On-Site Research

Viewing copies (on video or dvd) of many films are available for onsite study by researchers and scholars at CVM's offices in downtown Los Angeles in the Gallery Row Arts District. Please email or call for an appointment. CVM does not make or provide dubs of these research copies; please see our online Store for available titles for research purposes.

5. Licensing for Museum Exhibitions and Installations

Certain films (including those by Fischinger and Belson) may be licensed under very specific conditions. Please provide complete details of your exhibition including description of the space planned for exhibiting films or digital media (what else will be in this space? are there black or white walls? describe lighting levels, etc.); type of projection and screen, or type of monitor; plans for avoiding light and sound leaks; list of other planned films in the exhibition; full list of venues and dates, licensing fees budgeted. We cannot process requests without all of the above information. Email to cvmaccess (at) gmail.com

Please note that many requests are not approved due to insufficient information, unacceptable spaces, or lack of preparation time. All requests are subject to loan and technical prep fees.

More about CVM's Collections and Archives

Please direct all inquiries to

Center for Visual Music

Via email: CVM
Via phone (downtown Los Angeles office) 213-683-1514