The Magic Rosette [La Rosace magique] (1878)

Director: Émile Reynaud
France (formerly French Republic)
1878

In its day, the moving images in Émile Reynaud's "The Magic Rosette" (1878) must have felt more exciting than some of the current developments in AI technology. Ground-breaking in form and content, this is one of the few pre-cinematic works of art that possess true magic within them. Released in his second series of praxinoscope strips, this proto-animation predates by about three decades the development of abstraction in Western painting by artists such as Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky. A century on, Reynaud with this modest experiment in animation would also become a key influence for digital art produced by early computer models.


Ion Martea

Ion Martea is a British award-winning poet, novelist and critic, and the founding editor of Essential Films.

https://www.essential-films.co.uk/ion-martea
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The Tight-rope Dance [La Danse sur la corde] (1878)

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Sallie Gardner at a Gallop (1878)