Light rhythms [DVD] : music and abstraction / Anthology Film Archives ; Kodak ; in association with British Film Institute-Cineric, Inc.-Deutsches Filmmuseum-Film Preservation Associates-George Eastman House-The Library of Congress-The Museum of Modern Art present ; curator, Bruce Posner ; DVD producer, David Shepard.

Special features: [PDF files require a DVD-ROM drive and Adobe Acrobat]; Filmmaker biographies and photo gallery; Acknowledgments; Sponsors; Film note authors; Musicians; Credits; Essay ´Where the Buffalo Roamed...Relative Histories of an Early American Avant-Garde Film´ by film historian Bruce Posner, in accompanying booklet (v.1).

_ Retour à la raison-Return to reason / Man Ray (1923) (3 min.) -- Ballet mécanique / Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy (1923-24) (16 min.) -- Anémic cinéma / Rrose Sélavy also known as Marcel Duchamp (1924-26) (7 min.) -- Looney lens series: Anamorphic people / Al Brick ; Fox News (1927) (2 min.) -- Out of the melting pot / W. J. Ganz Studio (1928) (3 min.) -- H2O / Ralph Steiner (1929) (13 min.) -- Surf and seaweed / Ralph Steiner (1929-30) (13 min.) -- Vorkapich montage sequences 1928-37 Furies / Slavko Vorkapich (1934) (3 min.) -- Legacy of a Hollywood extra / Slavko Vorkapich (1928-29) (3 min.) -- Firefly: Battle of Vitoria / Slavko Vorkapich and MGM versions (1937) (3 min.) -- Maytime: Opera singer´s romance/career / Slavko Vorkapich (1937) (4 min.) -- So this is Paris: Artist´s ball / Ernst Lubitsch (1926) (4 min.) -- Light rhythms / Francis Bruguière and Oswell Blakeston (1929-30) (5 min.) -- Une nuit sur le Mont Chauve-Night on Bald Mountain / Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker (1933) (8 min.) -- Rhythm in light / Melville Webber, Mary Ellen Bute, and Theodore Nemeth (1934) (5 min.) -- Synchromy no. 2 / Mary Ellen Bute and Theodore Nemeth (1936) (6 min.) -- Parabola / Rutherford Boyd, Mary Ellen Bute, and Theodore Nemeth (1936-38) (9 min.) -- Footlight Parade by a waterfall / Busby Berkeley ; Warner Brothers (1933) (10 min.) -- Glens Falls sequence / Douglass Crockwell (1937-46) (7 min.) -- Simple destiny abstractions / Douglass Crockwell (1937-40) (90 sec.) -- Abstract movies / George L. K. Morris (1939-47) (10 min.) -- Scherzo / Norman McLaren (1939) (1 min.) -- Composition #1: Themis / Dwinell Grant (1940) (4 min.) -- Composition #2: Contrathemis / Dwinell Grant (1941) (4 min.) -- 1941 / Francis Lee (1941) (4 min.) -- Moods of the sea / Slavko Vorkapich and John Hoffman (1941) (10 min.).

Music, George Antheil, Donald Sosin, Shane Ryan, Eric Beheim, Marc Blitzstein, Ludwig von Beethoven, John Alden Carpenter, Jack Elitt, Modest Moussorgsky, Edvard Grieg, Richard Wagner, Darius Milhaud, Sammy Fain, Irving Kahal, Norman McLaren, Igor Stravinsky, Felix Mendelssohn ; editor, Paul D. Lehrman.

Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell.

American experimental film has existed since the technological inception of cinema, through its adolescent rambles of 1900-1919, rising phoenix-like during the high silent era, and finally matured and spread throughout the ´30´s and onward. The background against which the experimentalists toiled provides a fascinating review of Americana coupled with numerous cross-currents, successes and failures, and an unfailing desire to create on film an image that can be viewed as an independent and provocative art.

DVD; Region 0 (All), NTSC; Dolby Digital stereo; original presentation aspect ratio, 1.33:1.