Julian Antonisz

Who was Julian Antonisz?

Julian Antonisz, born Julian Józef Antoniszczak, was a Polish avant-garde filmmaker, artist, animator, screenwriter, composer, and inventor.

Best known as an inventor and promoter of his unique animation technique called non-camera. Sun: A Non-Camera Film 1977 was his first all non-camera movie, although the technique has been used also in Antonisz's earlier productions. The idea after the tehnique was to paint or scratch the images directly onto the movie tape instead of using a camcorder. Usually one second of movie uses 24 frames. For example, his debut film Phobia 1967, lasts 11 minutes. 660 seconds times 24 frames gives us 15,840 images that had to be painted.

Antonisz famous of his mechanical skills, has constructed numerous accessories supporting the creation of non-camera movies. Antoniszograf fazujący was a machine which scratched a set of frames, with a fluid transition between the two following images. Another invention was a prototype of chropograf, which created an image with distinctive levels of roughness, allowing the blind to recognize shapes presented on the picture.