Compiled by Roger Horrocks

 

Tusalava (1929)
10 min, 35 mm - 16 frames/sec, b&w, silent

This pioneer experimental film about "the beginnings of organic life"  was premiered by the London Film Society in 1929.  Tusalava used orthodox (camera) animation but its imagery was a unique mix of Maori, Aboriginal, and modernist influences. The film was nearly refused a certificate by the British Board of Censors who suspected that it might be about sex.  The Samoan title means 'just the same'.  Music for two pianos by Jack Ellit was played live at the premiere but the score has been lost.

 

Experimental Animation (also "Peanut Vendor") (1934)
3 min, 35mm, b&w, sound

Music: "Peanut Vendor" by Red Nichols and his Five Pennies

The protagonist of this film is a marionette monkey built by the film-maker himself.  Lye presented this film as a prototype in the hope of finding partners for a series of puppet films, but without success.

 

Full Fathom Five (1935)
9 min, 35mm colour, sound
Voice: John Gielgud
Synchronization: Jack Ellitt

The first animated "direct film" by Len Lye.  The abstract images accompany three passages of Shakespeare, from the song of Ariel in The Tempest.  Much of the film has been lost, but a description by Robert Harring was published in the Autumn 1937 edition of Life and Letters Today. 

 

A Colour Box (1935)
4 min, 35mm Dufaycolour, sound
Music: La Belle Créole  by Don Baretto and his Cuban Orchestra
Synchronisation: Jack Ellitt
Producer: John Grierson
Sponsor: GPO Film Unit
First screening: 6 September 1935

The first of Lye's 'direct films' to receive a public screening. Promoted by Sidney Bernstein's Granada chain of cinemas, it eventually came to be seen "by a larger public than any experimental film before it, and most since" (as the film historian David Curtis has pointed out). Its soundtrack is a beguine - a dance popular in France during the 1930s.  A Colour Box won a Medal of Honour at the 1935 International Cinema Festival in Brussels.  Having no suitable category in which to award the film, the jury simply invented a new one.

Kaleidoscope (1935)
4 min, 35 mm Dufaycolour, sound
Music: Beguine d'Amour by Don Baretto and his Cuban Orchestra
Synchronisation: Jack Ellitt
Producer: Gerald Noxon
Sponsor: Imperial Tobacco Company
First screening: 27 October 1935, London Film Society

Another 'direct' film synchronised to music by Don Baretto and his Cuban Orchestra. Lye experimented with new forms of 'direct film' imagery, with the help of stencils. The film was sponsored as a prestige advertisement for Churchman's Cigarettes.  For the first screening of the film, Lye cut the cigarette shapes out of the print, so that the light would project directly through them onto the screen.

 

The Birth of a Robot (1936)
7 min, 35mm Gasparcolor, sound
Producer: Humphrey Jennings
Music: "Venus" and "Mars" excerpts from Gustav Holst's The Planets
Synchronisation: Jack Ellitt
Camera: Alex Strasser
Colour consultant: Humphrey Jennings
Art Director: John Banting and Allen Fanner
Sponsor: Shell-Mex and BP Ltd.
First screening: 26 April 1936 (London Film Society)

Puppets were bought to life by camera animation and combined with colourful backgrounds and visual effects. This tongue-in-cheek publicity film for Shell Oil incorporated the company's robot trademark.

 

Rainbow Dance (1936)
5 min, 35mm Gasparcolour, sound
Producer: Basil Wright and Alberto Cavalcanti
Camera: Frank Jones
Music: Tony's Wife by Rico's Creole Band
Synchronisation: Jack Ellitt
Dance: Rupert Doone
Production Company: GPO Film Unit
Sponsor: Post Office Savings Bank
First screening: 1936

Dancer Rupert Doone appears as a silhouette performing various actions against stylised backgrounds; and cartoon drawings are combined with live action. The film was shot in black and white - using black and white backdrops - then "colourised" in the laboratory by manipulating the three separate emulsion layers of Gasparcolour film. At the time this was an astonishingly original way to make a colour film - and Lye saw it as an opportunity to transform "realism" into colour "hieroglyphics".  The film, sponsored by John Grierson's G.P.O. Film Unit, had an enthusiastic reception at the 1937 Venice Film Festival, though it was rejected by many cinemas in the UK as too experimental.

 

Trade Tattoo (1937)
5 min, 35mm Technicolor, sound
Producer: John Grierson
Music: the Lecuona Band
Synchronisation: Jack Ellitt
Sponsor: GPO Film Unit
First screening: September 1937

This film uses a tightly edited montage of black and white off-cuts from G.P.O. Film Unit documentaries to convey the rhythm of trade.  Lye completely transformed this found footage by layering the elements with stencilled patterns and animated words.  Synched to the Leucuona Band's rollicking music, Lye processed these negatives using the three colour matrices of the Technicolor film stock. Trade Tattoo is one of Lye's most technically complex and most successful films.

 

N. or N.W. (1937)
7 min, 35mm b&w, sound
Produced by Alberto Cavalcanti
Camera: Frank Jones
Actors: Evelyn Corbett, Dwight Goodwin
Music: I'm Gonna Sit Right Down by Fats Waller, T'aint No Use by Benny Goodman and his Orchestra,  Give Me a Break by Bob Howard and his Orchestra
Sponsor: GPO Film Unit
First screening: 1937, London Film Society

A live action film about a quarrel between young lovers (played by Evelyn Corbett and Dwight Goodwin) which ends happily when the Post Office delivers a misaddressed letter of reconciliation. Music and close-ups are used to give an intimate impression of their thoughts and feelings. Sponsored by the G.P.O. Film Unit, this is one of Lye's wildest experiments in re-thinking the conventions of film editing. It is full of audacious jump-cuts and - despite being an advertisement for the Post Office - it was hailed by the British wing of the Surrealists.

 

Colour Flight (1938)
4 min, 35 mm Gasparcolour, sound
Music: Honolulu Blues (Red Nichols and his Five Pennies)
Synchronisation: Ernst Meyer
Sponsor: Imperial Airways
First screening: 12 June 1939

This riot of colour was a showcase for Lye's hand-painted and stencilled imagery. Like other experimenters of the 1930s (such as Oskar Fischinger), Lye financed his films by finding an advertising sponsor - in this case, Imperial Airways. The soundtrack is a rhumba by the Lecuona Cuban Boys and Honolulu Blues by Red Nichols and his Five Pennies. Time magazine ran a story on the film (12/12/38) which hailed Lye as the English alternative to Walt Disney.

 

Mad About Money (collaboration) (1938)
35mm b&w, sound
Director: Melville Brown
Actors: Harry Langdon and Ben Lyon

Lye worked on two sequences of this British musical comedy also known by the name Stardust.

 

The March of Time (collaboration) (1938-1951)
 Len Lye works as a director for this popular series of films on current issues.  He worked full time from 1944 to 1951, when the series ended.  Most of the episodes include the work several directors, making it difficult to isolate Lye's particular contributions. The episodes on which Lye worked are:
The Irish Question (v.10/9, April 1944)
Memo from Britain (v. 11/8, March 1945)
Teen-Age Girls (v. 11/11, June 1945)
Where's the Meat? (v. 11/12, June 1945)
Life With Baby (v. 12/6, January 1946)
Night Club Boom (v. 12/8, March 1946)
Atomic Power (v. 12/13, August 1946)
T-Men in Action (v. 14/2, October 1947)
Farming Pays Off (v. 15/8 August 1949)

Swinging the Lambeth Walk (1939)
4 min, 35mm Dufaycolour, sound
Editor: Ernst Meyer
Sponsor: Travel and Industrial Development Association and the British Council
First Projection: December 1939

The Lambeth Walk was a popular dance of the period, with a characteristic hand gesture and call ("Oi!"). Ernst Meyer edited together various versions of the music for Lye who matched them with different kinds of 'direct film' imagery.

 

Musical Poster #1 (1940)
3 min, 35mm Technicolor, sound
Editor: Ernst Meyer
Sponsor: British Government Ministry of Information
First Screening: July 1940

Another 'direct film' translating jazz music into abstract patterns. It also includes some animation sequences of words which emphasise the need for security in war-time. Sponsored by the Ministry of Information which was using the talents of British artists to find new, eye-catching ways to convey war-time information to the public.  These types of films were screened not only in cinemas, but also factories and town halls.

 

When the Pie was Opened (1941)
8 min, 35mm b&w, sound
Camera: A.E. Jeakins
Music: In My Solitude by Fats Waller
Sound: Ernst Meyer
Actors: Valerie Forrest, Hilde Masters
Production company: Realist Films
Sponsor: British Government, Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Food

A live action film with some clever sound effects. Sponsored by the Ministry of Information, the purpose of this war-time film was to show people how to cook up an interesting pie despite food shortages. It was typical of Lye that he turned even a prosaic subject of this kind into a playful film full of surprises and experiments.

 

Newspaper Train (1942)
5 min, 35mm b&w, sound
Commentary: Merril Mueller
Camera: A.E. Jeakins
Production company: Realist Films
Sponsor: British Government, Ministry of Information

Using live action, found footage, still photographs, animation and scratching, this film is an homage to those who continued to distribute newspapers during the London Blitz.

 

Work Party (1942)
7 min, 35mm b&w, sound
Music: Louis Armstrong
Producer: John Taylor
Production company: Realist Films
Sponsor: British Government, Ministry of Information

Also known by the title Factory Family, this film documents the women of the Herrick family who worked in a munitions factory.

 

Kill Or Be Killed (1942)
18 min, 35mm b&w, sound
Actor: Duncan Chisholm
Producer: John Taylor
Production company: Realist Films
A live-action film sponsored by the Ministry of Information and used to train soldiers. It dramatises a deadly encounter between a British soldier and a German sniper. Several critics have hailed this grim film as a masterpiece because of its precise physical action and streamlined camera-work and editing which gives the viewer a vivid sense of battlefield reality.

 

Collapsible Metal Tubes (1942)
90 sec, 35mm b&w, sound

Also known under the title Tin Salvage, this film is one of a series of "film-ads" screened in British cinemas during the war.  It encouraged people to recycle their jam tins because the Japanese controlled much of the world supply of tin.

 

Planned Crops (1942)
90 sec, 35mm b&w, sound

Another film-ad.  The comedian Ted Ray performs before a screen designed by the cartoonist Giles.

 

Cameramen at War (1943)
17 min, 35mm b&w, sound
Commentary: Raymond Glendenning
Editor: Ernst Meyer
Production company: Realist Films
Sponsor: British Government, the Ministry of Information

A tribute to war-time cameramen. Lye selected samples of their work to illustrate their problems and achievements. Sponsored by the Ministry of Information, this film is fascinating as a study of cameramen at work as well as a study of life at war.

 

Basic English (1945)
6 episodes of 10 minutes each, 35mm b&w, sound
Consultant: I.A. Richards
Production company: The March of Time

This series of pedagogical films was based on a new method of teaching English to new immigrants.

 

Bells of Atlantis (collaboration) (1952)
9 min, colour, sound
Director: Ian Hugo
Music: Louis and Bebe Barron
Actor and Narrator: Anais Nin

Lye helped Ian Hugo create special effects for this film based on Anais Nin's book The House of Incest.

 

Autumn Leaves (collaboration) (1953)
Sound
Producer: Cecile Starr

This montage uses film shot by the Canadian National Film Board to illustrate a popular song. It was given to Len Lye for an early morning broadcast on CBS, animated by Will Roger Jr.

 

Color Cry (1952-3)
3 min, 16mm Kodachrome, sound
Music: Fox Chase by Sonny Terry
Producer: Ann Zeiss

After the war Lye moved to New York and played a part in the upsurge of experimental film making in the US. Color Cry was a direct film made by the 'rayogram' or 'shadow cast' method: strips of 16 mm film were laid out in a dark room, covered with stencils, colour gels, and objects such as fabrics, string and saw blades, and then exposed. The strips of film were edited to Fox Hunt by blues musician Sonny Terry, which Lye interpreted as the feelings of a black slave fleeing a Southern lynch mob. This is one of Lye's greatest films and its imagery is unique.

 

Full Fathom Five (unfinished) (c. 1953)
1 min, 16mm b&w, sound

This experimental film used the animated words on the same print that Lye used in his film of the same title in 1935.  In the beginning of the 1950s, the Lye discussed new ways of realising a film-poem with the poet Dylan Thomas.  The death of Thomas in 1953 put an end to their collaborative project. 

 

Life's Musical Minute (unfinished) (c. 1953)
1 min, 16mm colour, sound
Music: Golden Wedding by Benny Goodman

A direct film created in the style of Color Cry, based on a drum solo by Gene Krupa.  Len Lye made this in the hope of inspiring Life magazine to commission a similar film as a prestige advertisement.

 

All Soul's Carnival (1957)
16min, 16mm colour, sound
Music: All Soul's Carnival by Henry Brant
First screening: 3 March 1957 at Carnegie Hall

Lye created this film to accompany a suite of chamber music by Henry Brant.  The goal was not synchronisation but a free interaction. The film was rediscovered and reconstructed by Roger Horrocks with the help of the composer, the Museum of Modern Art, and the New Zealand Film Archive.

 

Rhythm (1957)
1 min, 16mm b&w, sound
Music: African tribal music, unknown
Production company: Direct Film Company
Producer: James Manilla

Invited to make a one minute film for the Chrysler Corporation's weekly television programme, Lye took 90 minutes of footage showing the making of a car and edited and synchronised it to African drum music. The film won first prize in the television category in the 1957 New York Art Directors' Festival but was subsequently disqualified because it had never been broadcast (Chrysler had rejected it). P. Adams Sitney said in his book Visionary Films: "Although his reputation has never been sustained by the invention of direct painting on film, Lye deserves equal credit as one of the great masters of montage".

 

Free Radicals (1958)
5 min, 16mm b&w, sound
Music: The Bagirmi Tribe of Africa
Production company: Direct Film Company

In this powerful abstract film with a soundtrack of African drum music, Lye scratched "white ziggle-zag-splutter scratches" on to black leader, using a variety of tools from saw teeth to arrow heads. The first version of the film won a major award at the International Experimental Film Festival Held in Brussels in 1958 in association with the World's Fair. Stan Brakhage described the film as "an almost unbelievably immense masterpiece".

 

Prime Time (c.1958)
1 min, 16mm hand-tinted b&w, sound

This animated direct film uses some of the same material as Tal Farlow and Free Radicals.  It was synchronised to the same music as Rhythm.  Lye produced it in the hope of finding a television channel which would commission similar publicity material.

 

Percussion (c. 1958)
1 min, 16mm b&w, sound

Another version of Prime Time, created with the same intention.

 

Fountain of Hope (1959)
1 min, sound
Music: Henry Brant, performed by the United Nations Singers

This film, also known by the title Peace, was financed by the United Nations to commemorate UN day on 24 October.  The words "United Nations" and "Peace" in 30 languages appeared with Lye's sculpture Fountain.  Brant's choral music repeats the sounds of the word peace in many languages.  The film has been lost.

 

The Sign of Plexiglass (collaboration) (1959)
16mm
Director: Dan Klugherz
Music: Opus de Jazz by Milt Jackson
Sponsor: Rohm and Hass

For this publicity film, Len Lye created an animated sequence using fragments of coloured plexiglass.

 

Free Radicals (1979)
4 min, 16mm b&w, sound
Assistants: Paul Barnes and Steven Jones
Sponsor: New Zealand Film Commission

A new version of the 1958 film, Lye removed sequences he considered less successful to reduce the film to four minutes.

Particles in Space (1957)
4 min, 16 mm,  b&w , sound

Returning to the scratch methods of Free Radicals Lye explored a new kind of imagery: "Vibrating dots and dashes which swirled, pulsed, squiggled and darted about the screen - particles of energy in space". Lye made several versions of the film in the 1960s but almost completely remade it in 1979 with the assistance of Steve Jones and Paul Barnes. Synchronised to drum music from the Bahamas and from Nigeria, the film begins and ends with sounds of Lye's steel kinetic sculptures (another area of art in which he was a pioneer).

 

Tal Farlow (1980)
1min 30sec, 16 mm, b&w, sound

In the 1950s Lye made geometrical scratch patterns to accompany the elegant jazz guitar playing of Tal Farlow. He returned to this project in 1980 but died before he could complete it. The editing was finished by his assistant, Steve Jones under the supervision of Ann Lye.