CGAA Cinema: Mechanical Principles (1933)

Created by Avante-Garde American filmmaker, Mechanical Principles (1933) is a 10-minute abstract film comprised entirely of engineering demonstration models.

The interesting thing about this film is that it can be considered beautiful in two totally different ways:

•  firstly, as an abstract cinematic tribute to the machine age, similar to Fritz Lang's use of mechanical components during the opening sequence of Metropolis (1927)
•  secondly, as a series of elegant solutions - each mechanism featured is a solution to an engineering problem; the unusually-shaped gears in particular are designed to turn a constant input into a specific, varying, output.