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Born in Bácsborsód in Hungary in 1895, László Moholy-Nagy was destined for a career in law interrupted by the First World War, in which he had to take part as an artillery officer in the Austro-Hungarian army. He had always liked to draw, and during his service he produces hundreds of sketches on postcards issued by the military. Wounded, his time spent in convalescence allows him to mature his socialist ideals and to start writing. Encouraged by a friend, an art critic, to continue with his art, he attends evening classes at Robert Berény’s school. In 1918 he begins his career as an artist and participates in exhibitions. In 1920, having just arrived in Berlin, and influenced by Russian Constructivism, especially El Lissitzky, he turns towards abstraction. His desire to produce works that are objective and free from the painter’s touch leads him to a concern with transparency and light. He perfects his methods with the photogram in 1922. Thanks to the movement of light and shadow, he manages to dematerialize real objects. He thus attracts the attention of the architect Walter Gropius, who appoints him professor at the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1923. The school’s goal in uniting art and technology in the service of humanity was perfectly suited to the artist’s utopian ambitions. In 1925, the school moves to Dessau. Moholy-Nagy’s compositions become more dynamic, and he introduces industrial materials into his practice. In 1928, together with Gropius, he leaves the Bauhaus and moves to Berlin. where he sets up his own design practice.
In 1929 he starts making films. Most of them deal with the agitation of the city, architecture, or human activity. He uses light to establish a social dialectic, to highlight certain aspects of daily life, to awaken the viewer to politics. The only film that is truly faithful to the abstraction advocated in his writing is also the best known: EIN LICHTSPIEL SCHWARZ WEISS GRAU (or “A Lightplay: Black White Gray”), based on a kinetic sculpture, the Light-Space Modulator (also called Light Prop for an Electric Stage). With this work he completes the work he had initiated in his photograms. The Nazis closed the Bauhaus in 1933. Moholy-Nagy leaves Berlin for Amsterdam and then London in 1935, and emigrates to the United States in 1937. He goes to Chicago to become director of a new design school founded by the Association of Arts and Industries. He dies in Chicago of leukemia in 1946.
“Movements, queerly shifting grids. ‘Drunken’ screens, lattices. Views through small openings; through automatically changing diaphragms... Blinding moving light flashes. Revolving spiral, reappearing again and again. Rotation increases; all concrete shapes dissolve in light.” – László Moholy-Nagy, “Ein Lichtspiel schwarz weiss grau” screenplay, in Vision in Motion, page 289 (1947).
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DO NOT DISTURB - JEALOUSY
1945 / color / sound / single screen / 18' 47 / 79 € distribution: 16mm or DCP on server or Digital file on USB stick |
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DESIGN WORKSHOPS
1944 / color / sound / single screen / 36' 15 / 135 € distribution: 16mm or DCP on server or Digital file on USB stick |
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INTERVIEW WITH STUDENTS (NO SOUND) AND DISPLAY OF STUDENT WORK - Unedited fragments
1943 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 3' 40 / 29 € distribution: Digital file on server |
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STUDENT EXHIBITION #1 - Unedited fragments
1943 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 9' 00 / 42 € distribution: Digital file on server |
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STUDENT EXHIBITION #2 - Unedited fragments
1943 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 5' 30 / 40 € distribution: Digital file on server |
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WORK OF THE CAMOUFLAGE CLASS - Unedited fragments
1942 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 22' 00 / 90 € distribution: Digital file on server |
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CHILDREN'S WORKSHOP - Unedited fragments
1940 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 3' 10 / 26 € distribution: Digital file on server |
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LOBSTERS
1936 / b&w / silent / single screen / 16' 00 / 68 € distribution: 16mm or DCP on server or Digital file on server |
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THE NEW ARCHITECTURE AND THE LONDON ZOO - LONDON ZOO
1936 / b&w / silent / single screen / 15' 30 / 66 € distribution: 16mm or DCP on server or Digital file on server |
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OUTTAKES FROM THE FILM "THINGS TO COME"
1936 / 35mm / b&w / silent / single screen / 2' 35 / 22 € distribution: DCP on server or Digital file on server |
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ARCHITEKTURKONGRESS
1933 / b&w / silent / single screen / 29' 00 / 124 € distribution: 16mm or DCP on server or DCP on USB stick or Digital file on USB stick |
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TÖNENDES ABC / ABC IN SOUND
1933 / b&w / sound / single screen / 1' 55 / 26 € or 17 € distribution: 16mm or Digital file on server |
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GROßSTADT ZIGEUNER - GYPSIES (GROSSSTADT ZIGEUNER)
1932 / 16mm / b&w / silent / single screen / 12' 00 / 49 € distribution: 16mm or DCP on server or Digital file on server or Digital file on USB stick |
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BERLINER STILLEBEN
1931 / 35mm / b&w / silent / single screen / 9' 00 / 42 € distribution: 16mm or DCP on server or Digital file on server |
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LICHTSPIEL SCHWARZ-WEISS-GRAU
1930 / b&w / silent / single screen / 5' 30 / 40 € distribution: 16mm or 35mm or DCP on server or Digital file on server |
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MARSEILLE VIEUX PORT
1929 / 35mm / b&w / silent / single screen / 9' 00 / 42 € distribution: 16mm or DCP on server or Digital file on server |