FLEISCHER FISCHINGER hosted by Jim Trainor February 27, 2010

For FLEISCHER FISCHINGER, Chicago animator Jim Trainor pairs films by two prominent animation figures of the 1930s. Max and Dave Fleischer were the creators of Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons, those gritty, witty, urban animations that served as a palliative to aggressive Disney wholesomeness. Oskar Fischinger was a German artist with a touching faith in the utopian ideals of abstract art; he made charmingly ingenuous abstract films in which drops of white light swoop and swirl in time to music. This program interweaves Fishinger's Studies with the equally bouncy and musical Fleischer cartoons. The effect, we hope, will be like sitting on an overstuffed couch, Louis Armstrong on the Victrola, paging through a book of Kandinsky paintings with Jean Harlow on your lap.

Jim Trainor has been making animated films since he was thirteen, and now he's forty-nine. His medium is black magic marker on typing paper. He grew up in Washington DC, and lived in New York City in his 20s and 30s. In 2000 Mr. Trainor got a teaching job at The School of the Art Institute of CHicago, where he is now lodged happily. Beyond filmmaking, his passions include birds and insects and forgotten anthropology books of the 1920s. He is the world's foremost authority on headhunting.

Official Website: http://www.three-walls.org