Oskar Fischinger

Three of Fischinger's films also made the 1984 Olympiad of Animation's list of the world's greatest films.

In the 1950s, Fischinger created several animated TV advertisements, including one for Muntz TV.

Although he never again - after 1947 - received funding for any of his personal films (only some commercial work), the Motion Painting No. 1 won the Grand Prix at the Brussels International Experimental Film Competition in 1949.

Secretly, Fischinger composed the silent movie Radio Dynamics (1942).

In the late 1940s Fischinger invented the Lumigraph (patented in 1955) which some have mistakenly called a type of color organ. Like other inventors of color organs, Fischinger hoped to make the Lumigraph a commercial product, widely available for anyone, but this did not happen. The instrument produced imagery by pressing against a rubberized screen so it could protrude into a narrow beam of colored light. As a visual instrument, the size of its screen was limited by the reach of the performer. Two people were required to operate the Lumigraph: one to manipulate the screen to create imagery, and a second to change the colors of the lights on cue. Today one of the instruments is in the collection of the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt, and the other two are in California.

Most of Fischinger's filmmaking attempts in America suffered difficulties. He composed An Optical Poem (1937) to Franz Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody for MGM, but received no profits due to studio bookkeeping systems. He designed the J. S. Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor sequence for Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940), but quit without credit because Disney altered his designs to be more representational.

Upon arriving in Hollywood in February 1936, Fischinger was given an office at Paramount, German-speaking secretaries, an English tutor, and a weekly salary of $250.

In 1932, Fischinger married Elfriede Fischinger, a first cousin from his hometown of Gelnhausen.

German painter and pioneer animator. In films, he was noted for his abstract shapes synchronised to music. He worked on the special effects of Fritz Lang's sci-fi classic Woman in the Moon (1929), moving to Hollywood in February 1936. He designed the Johann Sebastian Bachs 'Toccata and Fugue in D Minor' sequence for Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940), but quit without credit before its completion as his designs had been altered to be more representational.

In 1928, he was hired to work on space epic Woman In The Moon (German: Frau im Mond), directed by Fritz Lang, which provided him a steady salary for a time.

Facing financial difficulties, Fischinger borrowed from his family, and then his landlady. Finally, in an effort to escape bill collectors, Fischinger decided to surreptitiously depart Munich for Berlin in June 1927. Taking only his essential equipment, he walked 350 miles through the countryside, shooting single frames that were released many decades later as the film Walking from Munich to Berlin.