A fascinating investigation into the work of photographer and cinema pioneer Eadweard Muybridge, Thom Andersen's (Los Angeles Plays Itself, Red Hollywood) much-lauded documentary incorporates a biographical over view of its subject with a re-animation of his historic sequential photographs. Newly restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer discusses his early experiments in landscape photography as well as providing background information on his subjects. Assisted by filmmaker Morgan Fisher, Andersen re-photographed and then animated more than 3,000 of Muybridge's sequential images, giving new life to the experiments. Narrated by Dean Stockwell, Andersen s documentary is that rare feat of filmmaking as film criticism, an investigation into cinema s primordial years that connects the medium s invention to the broader history of Western representation.
