Rhythmus 211921

"Richter's first film, RHYTHMUS 21, stands at the very beginning of the avant-garde film movement. For the first time, a film has utilized the movie screen as a directors substitute for the painters' canvas, as a framed rectangular surface on which a kinetic organization of purely plastic forms is composed. For normally, the movie screen is perceived as a kind of window, more or less arbitrarily circumscribed, behind which an illusion of space appears. In RHYTHMUS 21, high contrast, it is a planar surface activated by the forms upon it. Thus its forms, like those of abstract painting of its time (especially Mondrian and Van Doesburg), have no physical existence except on the screen, nor do we sense their lateral extension beyond the limits of the screen as is usually the case with images created by camera vision. In RHYTHMUS 21, the screen is articulated by movements of mathematical percision and maximum of graphic clarity. Its content is essentially rhythm, the formal vocabulary is elemental geometry and the structural principle is counterpoint of contrasting opposites."–Standish D. Lawder.