Synopsis

When Hans Richter produced a compilation of his avant-garde films from the early 1920s, he titled it according to its central theme, Film ist Rhythmus (Film is Rhythm). Rhythmus 21 is today considered a key modernist film. Like Rhythmus 23, the film consists of pure visual ‘moving art’. Suggested by the theory of musical counterpoint, it is a ‘ballet’ of black, white, and a few grey geometric shapes that, as Richter put it, move in a rhythm that remains uniform throughout the entire image. (Berlinale)