Dockum Mobilcolour performance at the Guggenheim museum
The first half of the previous century was a golden age for the colour organ. A variety of artists each made their own version of the apparatus with which it was possible to ‘compose’ elegantly with colour. Moving images of this fragile play with light are however very hard to find, which makes this recording of a performance by Charles Dockum (1904-1977) a very rare document. His Mobilcolor machine was commissioned by Hilla Rebay of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (Guggenheim Foundation). It was an attempt to compete with a similar machine made by Thomas Wilfred: the Lumia in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
A film conservation by the Centre of Visual Music, Los Angeles.
Also in this combined programme
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Moment Musical
Light photogram film is an accurate remake of the one made by Stefan and Franciszka Themerson that was lost in World War II. -
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Blue Light
A widescreen projection of a meditative field of blue grain, created with a fine mist of paint. -
Le petit mort
Semi-abstract video with crackling blaze of light that can be both gruesome and beautiful. -
Flicker
Eyes open and keep looking into the blinding source of light that reduces figures and objects in this film to narrow silhouettes. All there is… -
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Radar
Beams of light cutting through space, edited from a large number of feature films, sporadically lighting the way to nowhere.
Film details
- Country of production
- USA
- Year
- 1952
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2007
- Length
- 7'
- Medium/Format
- 16mm