Len Lye Movies

Len Lye made this experiment in animating poetry circa 1953 utilising a clip of Sir John Gielgud reciting a passage from The Tempest.

Documentary about the Kiwi artist Len Lye and his legacy.

Surrealism, avant-garde sound montage, and irreverent wit might be the last thing you'd expect from a government-sponsored film about wartime...

With the screen split asymmetrically, one part in positive, the other negative, the film documents the evolution of simple celled organic forms into...

Life’s Musical Minute, recently re-discovered, is a short promotional film of this kind, based on Gene Krupa’s drum solo from...

Experimental documentary about recycling.

In this powerful abstract film with a soundtrack of African drum music, Lye scratched "white ziggle-zag-splutter scratches" on to black leader, using...

Documentary about New York night clubs.

Rainbow Dance is a 1936 British animated film released by the GPO Film Unit. This is Lye's second film. It uses the Gasparcolor process.

A fictional enactment of the deadly contest between a British soldier and a German sniper hiding in a tree. Kill or Be Killed differs from most army...

Short comedic documentary about crops.

A perfect fusion of poetry and film, with dense layered imagery and music from electro pioneers Louise and Bebe Barron. The writer Anaïs Nin...

This riot of color was a showcase for Lye’s hand-painted and stenciled imagery. Sponsored by Imperial Airways, it incorporates the...

Len Lye made Pictures for Percussion as a sample for television stations while living in the United States.

While stocking the shelves at work late at night, Mike finds a mysterious tape that calls upon The Peanut Vendor.

A British WWII propaganda short warning citizens that Nazi sympathizers could be listening to their everyday conversations to discover important...

Len Lye scraped together enough funding and borrowed equipment to produce a two-minute short featuring his self-made monkey, singing and dancing to...

In 1959 the United Nations commissioned Lye to make this one-minute film, “Fountain of Hope,” to publicize United Nations Day (24th...

Lye completed his last great film a few months before his death at the age of 78. The film returned to the black-and-white techniques of Free...