Stefan Drossler of the Munich Filmmuseum screened a digital copy of their recent restorations of Ruttmann's Opus films with the color, a few years ago in Los Angeles. Afterwards we spoke about their restoration, and he confirmed the intensity of colors (seen on their Ruttmann DVD compilation) could only be achieved digitally, not through photochemical means. Contact Munich Filmmuseum re the original Ruttmann material used in their preservation projects, and their Ruttmann DVD is quite useful.
For the definitive book on Ruttmann and his films, see Walter Ruttmann: Eine Dokumentation. JeanPaul Goergen, Ed., Published by Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek (1989). German language. Goergen, a Berlin-based animation historian, would likely have other more recent information useful for your research. Re older 16mm Ruttmann prints with color, mentioned in this thread. Correction to the below email from Pip, new Ruttmann prints don't come from CVM. Center for Visual Music (CVM) has *Cecile Starr*'s 16mm Ruttmann prints, but we don't have "new prints" restored by William Moritz, nor any quality restored Ruttmann prints done by Moritz. I remember reading about a project he did for this film, funded by the Frankfurt Filmmuseum, but have no information that he was able to work with any nitrate originals. He did often complain that for his attempted preservation projects, archives wouldn't release originals for him to work with (which is understandable). In any case, if funded by Frankfurt they'd have the negative, though I have to say the tinting test fragments done by Moritz that I've seen are not sophisticated restorations. I'd go to Munich Filmmuseum as a primary source. I'm not positive re the source of Starr's 16mm Ruttmann prints, but she was in close contact with his daughter Eva Riehl and distributed these on her behalf, so they may have come directly from her. We also have Starr's 16mm Richter and Eggeling prints, which derive from Richter's own originals. Re inquiry on other early abstract tinted/toned films - CVM preserved some of Oskar Fischinger's early tinted nitrate film for the *Raumlichtkunst* (c.1926/2012) 3 screen reconstruction projection, which has screened at Tate Modern, Whitney and Palais de Tokyo. It's currently on view, installed in Brisbane, Australia until May 2015, and there's a tentative German date for June. Contact me off list if you would like further information about that project. Also I published a few stills from some of Fischinger's other early hand-tinted tests, see page 110 in my book, Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967), Experiments in Cinematic Abstraction. (Amsterdam and Los Angeles: EYE Film Institute and Center for Visual Music, 2013). Distributed by Thames & Hudson. best regards, Cindy Keefer Center for Visual Music www.centerforvisualmusic.org CVM email - cvmaccess at gmail.com Fischinger research site: www.centerforvisualmusic.org/Fischinger > > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Pip Chodorov <[email protected]> > To: Experimental Film Discussion List <[email protected]> > Cc: > Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2015 23:46:10 +0100 > Subject: Re: [Frameworks] question regarding color preservation of early > animation films > I don't know where the hand painted originals are or if any exist at all. > There must be an internegative at the Eye Institute (Amsterdam) because I > think the 16mm print originally in circulation in Paris came from the Dutch > Filmmuseum in the 1980s. New prints come from CVM and were supervised by > Moritz but I don't remember the exact source of the older prints. > (I may be confusing with Ballet Mecanique because Moritz also restored > that.) > > We released a VHS in 1998 called "Dancing Images" with a Dutch company and > we included Opus. We got the rights from Ruttman's daughter Eva Riehl and I > made a Beta master from one of those original prints. Write me off-list if > you are interested in obtaining a digital file transfer from the beta at > cost. > > -Pip > > > > > >
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