BSA106 Emile Cohl.

Emile Cohl was a french animator. His film "Fantasmagorie" (1908) is considered to be one of the first all-animated films in history. Even though the film appears to have been made by drawing on a chalk board, it was actually done using paper and the blackboard effect was achieved by shooting the 700 drawings onto the negative film.

The film consists of little in the way of narrative structure, instead it all seems to be random things morphing into one another. Emile Cohl was a member of the incoherents, a precursor to the surrealists, and a group that were interested in the power of the ridiculous and the lucadrous.

Image result for emile cohl fantasmagorie

Cohl was one of the first to distort, stretch and compress his characters which can be seen in "Fantasmagorie". These techniques have later been used by disney, along with the abstract absurdity that 'Fantasmagorie" is full of because of its lack of plot.

I liked "Fantasmagorie" because I found it humourous and because of the constant morphing and changing of characters and situations, it held my attention. I also think that although it was quite old and it did show it's age, it still manages to appear timeless and relevent to modern day standards of animation because he uses many techniques that modern day animation uses.

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BSA106 German Expressionism.

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