Len Lye Movies

Lye created a series of scratched images in the 1950s – more regular or geometric than his usual style – to accompany Rock...

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

Len Lye’s camera-less film animates “swing” versions of the popular Lambeth Walk—featuring Django Reinhardt on guitar and...

Trade Tattoo went even further than Rainbow Dance in its manipulation of the Gasparcolor process. The original black and white footage consisted of...

This was another sample promotional film, which Lye offered to television stations. He scratched some dramatic black-and-white abstract images,...

A tribute to the cameramen of the newsreel companies and the service film units, in the form of a compilation of film of the cameramen themselves,...

Intended as a publicity film for Chrysler, Rhythm uses rapid editing to speed up the assembly of a car, synchronizing it to African drum music. The...

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

Documentary about New York night clubs.

Documentary about the Kiwi artist Len Lye and his legacy.

Short comedic documentary about crops.

Documentary about women factory workers.

For Kaleidoscope, which was sponsored by Churchman Cigarettes, Lye animated stenciled cigarette shapes and is said to have experimented by cutting...

Several well-known and pioneering abstract filmmakers discuss the history of non-objective cinema, the works of those that came before them and their...

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...

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.

Animated shapes dance to Cuban music. This was one of the first animations to be painted directly onto the film.

Experimental documentary about recycling.

Len Lye usually timed his films with great care to match their soundtracks, but for All Souls Carnival, he and composer Henry Brant worked...