28 March – 1 June 2008 Cinema A, GoMA
The cinematic genre of Visual Music draws on elements of form, colour and rhythm in music and images to create visual symphonies. Working with abstraction and figuration, gesture, pitch, beat and palette, filmmakers have explored the dynamism of sight and sound synaesthesia - hearing colour and line, seeing rhythm and tone - through innovative techniques and aesthetics. The Australian Cinémathèque’s Visual Music program includes an extraordinary range of approaches to this genre, from the Silly Symphonies, early Walt Disney musical animations, to retrospective programs of visual music pioneers, selections of rarely screened classics and contemporary works. This enduring and influential field of filmmaking counts among its leading practitioners such unique voices as Oskar Fischinger, Hans Richter, Len Lye, Norman McLaren, Stan Brakhage, James and John Whitney, Jordan Belson, Bärbel Neubauer and Mary Ellen Bute. The Silly Symphonies program is the most extensive to date internationally of these often hilarious and irresistibly charming visual choreographies. It showcases the technical and aesthetic innovations of Disney's musical animations. Other highlights include the in-depth retrospectives of work in this genre by Stan Brakhage and Norman McLaren.
