The iotaCenter presents the films of American filmmaker Hy Hirsh (1911-1961). A key figure in the American Abstract Film Movement, Hirsh was a contributor to the historic San Francisco Vortex Concerts and worked with both Jordan Belson and Harry Smith. In 1952, his film Come Closer was shown at the historic Art in Cinema screenings at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Autumn Spectrum and Gyromorphosis received awards at the 1958 Brussels Exposition. Hirsh worked as a motion picture cameraman in Hollywood and then as a still photographer. He moved to San Francisco where he began making his own films, and then relocated to Paris. He continued to travel on fashion and commercial still photography assignments, taking a tape recorder on his journeys to record live music performances for his extensive tape collection, some of which were used for his soundtracks. His films include abstract animated films loosely synched to music; complex optically printed collages of multi-plane animation (Hirsh built his own optical printer) using scratched and painted-on techniques, split screens, oil wipes, oscilloscope imagery and found footage. Hirsh also made a stereoscopic 3-D film. The preservation for Scratch Pad used Hirsh’s original 16mm hand-painted Kodachrome master; a new negative was optically printed. For the other titles, sources were Kodachrome masters and vintage Kodachrome prints from Hirsh’s estate and from Creative Film Society, former distributors of the films.