Berthold Bartosch - L'Idée (The Idea)

"Men live and die for an idea but the idea is immortal. We can pursue it, we can judge it, we can forbit it, we can sentence it to death but the idea continue to live in the men spirit." The idea (1932) begins with these words synthesizing all the political force of this animated film.

"(...) Bartosch showed that animation could be POETIC... It was Bartosch who first dared to give animation the dimension of a great art, trusting it to voice his pain, to lay bare his heart, to tell of his hope for a better future - which he never saw."
- Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker, 1969

Bartosch's only surviving film was made single-handely in Paris in 1932. Almost 45000 frames were animated on four different levels simultaneously, often with as many as 18 superimpositions made in the camera.

This DVD is a transfer from our original VHS release in 2003.  It is the official version copyrighted in 1976 by Maria Bartosch & Cecile Starr. The transfer was a supervised Digibeta transfer from a new 16mm print.  It remains the highest quality transfer ever made.