Mel Brooks is an old man watching abstract animations. He doesn't understand them, so he heckles with strange commentary, to the annoyance of those around him.

Mental imagery of music is visualized with two-dimensional shapes dancing to the rhythm of Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.

Abstract animated short film. Grey and white squares change size and shape on a black background.

An animation film, made without the use of a camera, in which "boogie" played by Albert Ammons and "doodle" drawn by Norman McLaren combine to make a rhythmic, brightly colored film experiment. The main title is in eight languages.

An experimental short film by Jordan Belson which combines various colors and shapes.

Mathematically precise early computer-aided animated piece based around the meditative-like inward and outward flow of images of the mandala.

In this animated short, simple geometric forms as thin and flat as playing cards constantly form and re-form to the sound of the koto, a 13-stringed Japanese instrument.

A bold synchronization to the transcendental music of Franz Liszt.

An experimental short film of flashing images made by Stan Brakhage.

We watch white shapes dancing on black background, which changes when the white shape fills up the screen completely, and black lines and figures bounce around on the now white background.

“If abstract films are really abstract films… they deal exclusively with those abstract relations that can be expressed in terms of shape and motion” wrote Robert Fairthorne in Film Art in 1936. A mathematician and information scientist, Fairthorne saw aesthetic potential in an animation made as a teaching aid by Salt, and proposed this collaboration. (Tate.org.uk)

Using the Gasparcolor film system, abstract shapes and patterns are painted directly on the film strip itself to create an animation set to upbeat music.

An experimental short film from Dwinell Grant which explores various colors and patterns.

A short painted film by Oskar Fishchinger which films images to the music of Johann Bach.

Lines: Horizontal is a movie made by etching lines directly onto film, like its sister Lines: Vertical. The entire movie consists of horizontal lines dancing in various mathematical patterns to beautiful music.

A set of words without any meaning, forms the title of the first and only feature film in the history of Spanish cinema made entirely by hand-painting directly on celluloid.

The film's soundtrack is an original musical composition produced with synthetic sound - through photographing unusual geometric shapes and running them through an optical sound head. The images are an artistic rendering of this soundtrack.

Directed by Jordan Belson.

An anthology of Harry Smith's films 1-5, 7, and 10, unfortunately without the divisions clearly marked.

A lateral descent through the midnight blues and blacks of ice and the refracted colors from absorbed oils.

Water for Maya is a hand-painted work which came into being during a film interview with Martina Kudlacek about Maya Deren. There was a sudden recognition of Maya’s intrinsic love of water and thus of all Mayan liquidity in magic conjunction, reflection, etc.

Four-dimensional quaternions (fractals) are visualized by projecting them into three-dimensional space. Instead of modeling objects of human imagination the realm of mathematics is explored. Only the variables of one formula (x[n+1]=x[n]^p-c) were changed. It took me about a year to get an idea of the transformations and shapes which could be expressed by this formula. Almost another year was needed to render the sequences which I decided to use.

The tv/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electrons in the cathode ray tube. For 'energie!' an uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approx. 30.000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

An abstract film in which every motion of coloured shapes is in strict synchronization with music

"Completed in 1957, less than ten minutes long, Yantra is questionably catalogued as abstract. Witness Brakhage's concept of closed-eye vision and our generic attribute of experimental film/video's affinity for mental imagery." -Edward Small, Direct Theory.

Against a dark background, several bright, curved or rounded shapes pulse towards the center of the screen, one at a time. They are followed by many other shapes, some irregular, some pointed, others rounded. The abstract shapes move into or across the screen in harmony with the musical score.

An abstract animation from Walter Ruttmann.

A tilted figure, consisting largely of right angles at the beginning, grows by accretion, with the addition of short straight lines and curves which sprout from the existing design. The figure vanishes and the process begins again with a new pattern, each cycle lasting one or two seconds. The complete figures are drawn in a vaguely Art Deco style and could be said to resemble any number of things, an ear, a harp, panpipes, a grand piano with trombones, and so on, only highly stylized. The tone is playful and hypnotic.

An abstract animation by Walter Ruttmann.

Directed by Oskar Fischinger.

One of the first color films in Europe, made with the Gaspar Color process.

Synchromy No. 2, synchronized to the "Evening Star" aria from Wagner's Tannhäuser, uses a statue of Venus to represent the star.

In the 1936 short Allegretto, diamond and oval shapes in primary colors perform a sensual, upbeat ballet to the music of composer Ralph Rainger. The geometric dance is set against a background of expanding circles that suggest radio waves.

Parabola is a celebration of film’s ability to create new ways of seeing the forms around us. Creating juxtapositions between light/shadow, stasis/motion, and form/music, this black-and-white short invites us to see the parabolic curve, or “nature’s poetry,” as both invigorating and beguiling.

It's midnight in a graveyard. The principal characters are spooks, ghosts, bats, bells, and, at the end, the sun. As midnight strikes, 12 spooks appear, then two ghosts. They move to the music's rhythm. Against the black night, they are blue and yellow. Bats appear as does a xylophone of bones. Mist rises, spooks swirl. A bell tolls. The sky turns light blue, the ghosts' dance slows. Then black night returns bringing intimations of frenzy. Bones play snare drums; spooks peek out of square graves. Scary faces appear. Frenetic movement takes over. A rooster crows and all return to earth as the sun's light appears.

Against a background of bluish light, several objects appear: a square, a circle, and a set of rods. As the background color occasionally varies in shade between blue and rose, the objects move around, forming various patterns.

Small colored shapes evolve, set to music from a street organ.

An experimental film from artist Harry Smith and part of his Number series of various animated scenes.

An experimental short from Peter Kubelka in which the film flickers between periods of light and sound.

An experimental short film by Jordan Belson which combines various colors and shapes.

A series of flicking shapes and colors.

An experimental short film from Jordan Belson which combines animated colors, shapes, and images.

An experimental short film by John Whitney Sr. which combines animated shapes and colors; Computer graphics as dynamic, swirling art.

While working at a photo lab, Frampton found that the waste at both ends of the rolls of processed film—where chemicals worked on the emulsion through clips used to attach the film to the machine—produced images far too interesting to be discarded. For Palindrome, Frampton selected images which he described as “tending towards the biomorphic,” resembling abstract surrealist painting. However, the rigid palindromic structure that Frampton imposes on the images—a motorized sequence based on “twelve variations on each of forty congruent phrases”—deviates from the subjective aesthetic of the expressive, demonstrating Frampton’s interest in the “generative power” of films composed by rules and principles.

“The changing dots, ectoplasmic shapes and electronic music of L. Schwartz’s ‘Mutations’ which has been shot with the aid of computers and lasers, makes for an eye-catching view of the potentials of the new techniques.” – A. H. Weiler, N. Y. Times

An experimental short film of flashing images made by Stan Brakhage.

Stan Brakhage's artistic view of the cosmos.

A film made without a camera, made by painting directly on the film.

Collection of Computer Graphic effects.

This hand-painted, step-printed film begins with several seconds of blank white (interrupted by red and brief electric yellow) and then proceeds to multiply flecked earth and rock shapes and root-like forms which seem to suck horizontally inward and upward midst phosphorescent greens and blues increasingly flecked with light-yellows giving way to tree-top branch likenesses taking oblique shape against a phosphor sky.

To the toccata portion of Bach's "Toccata and fugue in D minor," we watch a play of sorts. Blue smoke forms a background; a grid of black lines is the foreground. Behind the lines, a triangle appears, then patterns of multiple triangles. Their movements reflect the music's rhythm. Behind the barrier of the black lines, the triangle moves, jumps, and takes on multiple shapes. In contrast with the blue and the black, the triangles are warm: orange, red, yellow. The black lines bend, swirl into a vortex, then disappear. The triangle pulsates and a set of many of them rises.

An abstract animation from Walter Ruttmann.

The first Studies were synchronized with records (Fischinger made a total of 13 Studies all without sound). It was only with the introduction of sound, beginning with Study No 6 that the films did full justice to this musical principle. The play of the white lines, the arcs, and the upside-down U’s running hither and thither like ballet dancers was brought into perfect synchronization with the music, and thus the films offered an abstract illustration of the melodies. Study No 6 is certainly the best of his films in terms of forms. - Hans Scheugl and Ernst Schmidt, Jr.

In Fischinger's study No. 7, the shapes of Study No. 6 move to the 5th Hungarian dance by Johannes Brahms.

An experimental short from Oskar Fischinger

An experimental short from Oskar Fischinger

Screen titles introduce the film as a modern artist's impressions of what goes on in the mind while listening to music. Grieg's "Peer Gynt Suite" accompanies images of common objects and abstract forms photographed in soft focus and through prisms: rings, pyramids, the staff of musical notes, and floating lights are all seen in multiple images, sometimes as if through a kaleidoscope, other times as if in animation. Images appear and patterns move across the screen. Sparklers celebrate at the film's end.

A (barely) two minute short is that it was made specially for a Paramount newsreel segment on Bute and Nemeth making films in their teensy New York apartment. Paramount apparently never got round to including the filmmakers in any newsreel, but their own film survived in the Bute-Nemeth Archive. (weirdwildrealm.com) To the rhythm of music that sounds a bit like a Busby Berkeley tune, lines and circles appear against a black background. Then triangles, in groups. Black and white squares move in tandem. Sparkling forms turn in kaleidoscopic patterns. Then cubes appear, white against the background, bouncing; a yin and yang rotate a few times before the film ends with an quick burst of scattering light.

Here the artist creates a world of color, form, movement and sound in which the elements are in a state of controllable flux, the two materials (visual and aural) are subject to any conceivable interrelation and modification.

This sequel to Themis (1940) similarly simulates the movement of abstract colours and shapes to form distinct visual patterns.

An experiment in color and rhythm with no music.

An experiment into what the director termed 'colour rhythm'.

An early film by Jordan Belson from 1952. "[Belson's] early films animated real objects (pavements in Bop Scotch [1952]) and scroll paintings prepared like film strips with successive images (Mandala [1953]). Belson subsequently withdrew these films from circulation as imperfect and primitive, but they already reflect his refined plastic sensibility, fine color sense, and superb sense of dynamic structure. They also foreshadow his more accomplished expressions of mystical concepts, Bop Scotch seeming to reveal a hidden soul and life-force in "inanimate" objects."

Breer's earliest experiments in animation are wonderfully dense yet lyrical abstractions based on Breer's own geometric paintings. - Harvard Film Archive

Impressions on the topic of plastics set to Vivaldi's Winter: blizzard, dancing moons, beats ice, sparkling silver crystals, petrified wood frozen.

This film consists of alternating black and white frames.

Paul Shartis's Ray Gun Virus (1966) is a transfixing, must-see-in-person “flicker” film that distills the cinematic experience to projected light and color patterns, allowing “the viewer to become aware of the electrical-chemical functioning of his own nervous system.”

Pixillation features computer generated abstract animations set to Moog-synthesized sound.

Rectangles pulsate to an electronic sound loop.

White circles appear and disappear on a black surface.

An experimental animated short from Jordan Belson which consists of various lights, colors, and images.

An experimental film by Jordan Belson which captures the music of lights, colors, and images.

An experimental short film by Stan Brakhage in which light, black and white, and color images are contrasted.

The enduring romance of the lines. A visual exploration of Dave Brubeck's jazz classic "Take Five".

“The rain” and “white noise” , “the outside of water” , “the inside of water” , everything become to together and drifting. A dark dark film in rain forest inspired by a music term to “Tranquil”.

An experiment in abstract film-making, this short film (as its name implies) consists only of vertical lines, drawn directly onto each film frame, that change in response to music.

Africa, 2003: mechanisms of memory and recollection.

"How do you find what you don't know you're looking for ?"

Experimental short film that shows four days in the life of a man clandestinely kept in captivity. The images of his naked body alternate with those of a happy moment on a beach and with those of his captor, who spends his time looking at bodybuilding magazines.

The inherent kinetic qualities are brought into actuality in GYROMORPHOSIS, as seen in the construction-sculpture of Constant Nieuwenhuys of Amsterdam. To realize this aim I have put into motion, one by one, pieces of this sculpture and, with color lighting, filmed them in various detail, overlaying the images on the film as they appear and disappear. In this way I have hoped to produce sensations of acceleration and suspension which are suggested to me by the sculpture itself. – Hy Hirsh

An experimental short film of images and sounds made by Lis Rhodes.

1941 was Francis Lee's first film; CH'AN his last. In between, he became an expert Sumi-e watercolorist and here he combines eloquent ink paintings with masterful animation methods. This film moves through mysterious shapes, takes the viewer on an explosive meditative journey across the imaginary landscapes of his creations.

Experimental film following a cycle of seasons as well as the stretch of a single day as a man and his dog slowly ascend a mountain.

An experimental abstract animation.

An abstract set to "Merry Wives of Windsor" by Nicolai.

Stars and stripes forever and ever and ever.

A film by James Whitney.