Visual Essays: Origins of FilmA film by Al Razutis (1973-1984) 56 min. color, sound ; on DVD and Individual prints 
"Both the visual artist and the educator make their appearances throughout
Origins of Film, but it looks to be the poet who has the
final say. Informing the overall shape of the project is an argument
that is presented at a number of levels. Each film is structured around
a distinct set of optical printing and collage techniques [and] ...
embodies a `look' which becomes the film's central strategy and metaphor."
(Peter Chapman, Independent Eye) In the collections of
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1 min. 40 sec. video |
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The subject of the first essay is cinema itself: an apparatus of representation wherein fact and fiction are recreated. As such, the pro-filmic facts are necessarily drawn from two of cinema's "pioneers": Louis and Auguste Lumière and Abel Gance ( La Roue, ), with additional material provided from a Warner Brothers featurette, Spills for Thrills.
The film breaks down into four distinct sections and is loosely centred around Lumière's classic one-shot film of a train pulling into a station Arrivée d'un train à la Ciotat, L' (1895).
The exposition and form of the film is closely tied to
the tradition of cine-structural poems which foreground the materials
of the medium (light, dark, form as shadow-projection of the cinematic
apparatus). Using alternations between positive and negative, the film
chronicles the "coming to life" (of the apparatus) and the resulting
action/movement and documentation of events - encompassing incidents
(the near mishaps), human expectations (the arrival at the station),
and human spectacle(the destruction of the trains, the station in chaos).
Towards this purpose, I have used an expanding narrative, a play on
the title itself, and the shifting conditions of synchronous and asynchronous
sound/image (and image-to-image). (A.R.)
Awards: Ann Arbor; Kent State; Baltimore film festivals.
Individually featured in international exhibitions,
retrospectives.
In the collection of the National Gallery
of Canada
Illustrated pages on the Lumière Brothers
One 16mm film print available for collectors at: 
MÉLIÈS CATALOGUE
8 min. color silent 1973
2 min. excerpt video
on YouTube:
This burning celluloid montage film presents the mythic iconography of the films of Georges Méliès -- a dreamlike terrain, a grab-bag of magician's surprises, a cornucopia of players that proceed from the imagination of that "magician" of cinema - announced by the opening motif, "the expanding head."
These incidents are presented/framed within the graphic form of burning frames, each image-shot erupting and being displaced by the following shot. This is an essay featuring discontinuity and surprise. Images in this piece were compiled from approximately 30 films by George Méliès, most notably 'A Trip to the Moon (1902)' -- (A.R.)
Short history - Georges Méliès
One 16mm film print available for collectors at:
SEQUELS IN TRANSFIGURED TIME
14 min. SEPIA-color sound 1976
2 min. excerpt video
on YouTube:
Sequels in Transfigured Time returns to Georges Méliès and notably portions of A Trip to the Moon (1902) and other early Méliès films (including a hand-colored early film, and uses techniques of 'frozen stills becoming movement', still which are initially 'abstractions' through the absence of movement and denial of depth (via graphic solarization). The stills are meditations on the "becoming of motion-picture reality" through movement and seamless editing (the "invisible"cut), mechanisms in the 'creation of narrative' (which Méliès thought to be secondary to 'special effects' for the eye).
This essay is also an elegy for Georges
Méliès, his "Eden lost and found," his cine-world
becoming obsolete and "ghostlike." This is a 'sound film' with the 'Elegy
for Méliès' occuring at the end (sound ). -- (A.R.)
Awards: Ann Arbor; Kent State; Northwest Film &Video Festival
Individually featured in international exhibitions, retrospectives.
Short history - Georges Méliès
GHOST: IMAGE
12 min. B&W sound 1976-79
Ghost: Image
1 min. excerpt video
on YouTube: 
Thematically proceeding from the last film, GHOST: IMAGE encompasses that tradition of "fantastic" films that includes Dada, Cubism, Surrealism, Expressionism, Poetic Realism, Symbolism, and eventually the horror genre (and of course Fritz Lang's Metropolis ).
Its formal design, the mirror image, creates a denial of axis and screen direction,with the result that the viewer must read "through the images." At times, the mirror images are reduced to their Rorschach component, and complemented by the presence of fragmented poetry (after T.S. Eliot and automatic writing), a metonymic realm suggesting "automatic disclosures" and unconscious correspondences in the developing discourse.
The familiar myths of woman as 'madonna' / 'victim' /
'temptress', and 'redemption through knowledge and science,' 'fear of
the undead," and 'fear of the irrational,' form the signposts of this
historical and cultural terrain.
Contains excerpts from aproximately 20 surrealist, dada, horror, films. (A.R.)
Individually featured in international exhibitions, retrospectives.
One 16mm film print available for collectors at:
FOR ARTAUD
10 min. color sound 1982
1 min. excerpt video
on YouTube: 
An essay on expressionism and the tradition of Gothic horror. It brings
to mind humanity caught between notions of absolutes, evils of monstrous
proportions,classicism, and questions of individuation. Artaud, though
a figure indirectly associated with film history, is suggested in this
essay as prime provocateur in the collision between classicism
(the "Greek chorus") and romantic expressionism. Dreyer's Passion
of Joan of Arc - in which Artaud himself appears (as
the monk) - serves to set the stage for this "inquisition." (A.R.)
Individually featured in international exhibitions, retrospectives.
STORMING THE WINTER PALACE
16 min. color sound 1984
Storming the Winter Palace
1 min. excerpt video
on YouTube: 
This last visual essay focuses on montage and the dialectics of Sergei Eisenstein's films, indicating their influence as cornerstones of silent cinema and as major contributions to the evolution of later cinema. Eisenstein's work in the areas of non-verbal signification and allegorical-revolutionary montage is subjected to three "framing" processes: inversion of chronological narrative, fragmentation and repetition of selected montage passages, and the interrogation of selected Oktober sequences by the application of 'saccadic eye movement' (animated) techniques.
Contains sequences from 'Battleship Potempkin' and 'Oktober' by Eisenstein.
Spoken text from writings of Benjamin Buchloh, and Soviet Formalist sources (freely adapted).
One 16mm film print available for collectors at:
'VISUAL ESSAYS: ORIGINS OF FILM'' available on DVD
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