Adebar
Adebar is a 1957 Austrian avant-garde short film directed by Peter Kubelka. It is the first entry in Kubelka's trilogy of metrical films, followed by Schwechater and Arnulf Rainer. Adebar is the first film to be edited entirely according to a mathematical rhythmic strategy. Description
Adebar uses footage from only eight unique shots that show dancing silhouettes, arranged in 16 rigidly structured sequences. Each sequence spans 104 film frames and consists of four shots lasting 13, 26, or 52 frames. The shots always alternate between positive and negative images. Some freeze on the first or last frame of the shot. The film's soundtrack is a 26-frame loop of Pygmy music. Production

Kubelka was commissioned to create a commercial for Café Adebar, a dance bar in Vienna. He filmed dancers against a white wall, using extreme backlighting to create silhouettes. Compared to the production of his first film Mosaik im Vertauen, Kubelka was less concerned with composition during production. He waited until after filming and selected images that fit what he wanted for use in Adebar. Release
Upon Adebars completion, Café Adebar rejected it as an advertisement. Kubelka exhibited the film in 1958 at the European Forum Alpbach. The film strip had ripped in a projector, so he turned it into a sculpture by cutting it and attaching it to haystack posts so that viewers could examine it and cut off pieces. Adebar is now part of Anthology Film Archives' Essential Cinema Repertory collection. References

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1950s avant-garde and experimental films
1950s dance films
1957 short films
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Austrian short films
Films directed by Peter Kubelka
Films without speech
Non-narrative films