Synchromy

I can discern 4 influences. First of all Oscar Fischinger, with his Hungarian Dance No. 5, because this film gave me the courage of my convictions. I wanted to make abstract films – not necessarily abstract films – but to compose abstract images based on music, and at that time I did not know how to go about it. At home I constructed coloured lights and moved them by hand over paper. But when I saw Oscar Fischinger’s, I told myself the solution was to make abstract films. Then there was Emile Cohl. I saw DRAMA AMONG THE PUPPETS (1908), and was struck by the purity, the simplicity of line, and the wonderful metamorphosis. I am not forgetting Alexandre Alexeieff and his NIGHT ON A BARE MOUNTAIN (1933). What gripped me was the fertile imagination, not so much technique as the creative imagination, the bold metamorphosis and the surrealist thinking. For surrealism had made a great impression on me. Finally Len Lye and his techniques of drawing directly onto the film. That is all. But I add two general influences: Pudovkin and Eisenstein. – N.C.