Jules Engel

Several well-known and pioneering abstract filmmakers discuss the history of non-objective cinema, the works of those that came before them and their own experiments in the field of visionary filmmaking.

Short experimental computer animation by Jules Engel

An experimental animated short film.

Short experimental film directed by Jules Engel.

Short experimental film directed by Jules Engel.

The film focuses on the thoughts inside the head of a man, an astronaut scheduled to go to the Moon. As he ponders the flight, he laments having an “ordinary” name he fears will not resonate throughout history. His thoughts lead him to consider some of the pioneers of flight-Icarus and his wings, the Montgolfier brothers and their balloon and the Wright brothers and heavier than air flight.

Jules Engel's Accident (1973) is a two-fold work of lithography and experimental animation to equally assert this awareness in the history of art, cinema, and experimental animation. Aside from a surface language of animal locomotion, the primacy of the frame as a principle of timing acceleration, deceleration and variation is fulfilled in the collective Muybridge, Engel and Deleuze. (stephenherbert.co.uk)

It's a painter's approach to filmmaking, to putting painting in motion. Shown at the Cannes Festival 1976

Short experimental animation by Jules Engel

Short experimental animation by Jules Engel

[The] Insinuation of accidentally spilled ink that would be running across the paper in random, aleatory oozes displaces the graceful liquidity of the careful animated choreography. - William Moritz

Directed by Jules Engel.

An early, experimental Jules Engel short.

A short experimental animation by Jules Engel

One of Jules Engel's works on the Visual Music 1946-1986 DVD from the Center for Visual Music.

Experimental animation done with marker, ink, and crayon on paper

Short abstract film about a gallery visit

Short experimental animation by Jules Engel

A sampling of abstract styles - black and white patterns, colorful flicker, and dancing line formations, interspersed with a strangely unnerving combination of organic and computer-generated sound effects.

2D sketches fill, rearrange, and texture themselves, with a score by Barry Schrader. One of Jules Engel's works on the Visual Music 1946-1986 DVD from the Center for Visual Music.

One of Jules Engel's works on the Visual Music 1946-1986 DVD from the Center for Visual Music.

Experimental animation

Begins as a whimsical piece with 'sheets' of lines running down the screen, progressing into more and more complex geometic patterns but without deviating from the basic precepts of 'dot and line' animation. Jazz piano on a lazy Sunday afternoon, and a spring color palette. -- Stephanie Sapienza. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.